50 réponses à ce sujet

[CptSpivey]

Herr Uhl wrote...

Dee-Jay wrote...
I mean, sure you can sit here and make fun of my point and just be blinded fanboys. But i can tell you, if you were watching a TV Series, with 21 episodes, and the overall plot was layed out in the first 5 episodes, with very few twists following, it wouldn't make a great series.

Yes the plot is pretty clichéd. But I still would prefer it to a TV-series that just says that what they thought was wrong at every turn, yes I'm looking at you Lost.

But I agree, the middle and beginning of the game is the most enjoyable. It kind of fizzles out somehow towards he ending, when all you've got to do is to kill the big bad and it's army.

For me that "fizzle" at the end came from lack of time spent on the darkspawn threat...  So much of my time is spent saving everyone from themselves and Loghain that the Archdeamon felt like an after thought.

[Faerell Gustani]

I agree about the lack of plot twist. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing if they gave us more options.

I particularly wanted a "Side with Loghain" option.

[BroBear Berbil]

You were the Archdemon all along.



What a twist!

[bobsmyuncle]

Kerridan Kaiba wrote...

mopotter wrote...

 I feel like a grumpy old lady and I probably am. I am disappointed,

I love the game. I love the interaction with the other characters, the voice acting and the story. But I HATE with capital letters the fact that in order for both wardens to survive your female has to send her lover to have sex with a beautiful woman.  

If I'm playing a guy, then great. I'll go have sex with the beautiful women to survive, but my female mage would much prefer to kill her and do the stupid ritual myself.

This drives me nuts. Once in a while I want a nice romantic happy ending and in order to ride off into the sunset with my gray warden lover, I have to send him to witch girl and I have to leave the room, literally. (my husband laughs at me). I just can not fathom what the writers were thinking (or thinking with) when they did this.

I was looking forward to playing DA in the mornings and ME2 in the evenings for the next few years. Looks like as soon as ME2 comes out I'll be spending my time with Shepard and her crew at least until someone comes up with a mod that fixes this thorn in my heart.

There's a whole group of girls here that agree with you. Do a search on Alistair and you'll find them.

Feel free to PM me if you want to find where the fangirls hang out. Although I'll say up front that angst fic is insanely popular in this fandom. I hope you're happy with yourself, GAIDER.

[Viglin]

Faerell Gustani wrote...

I agree about the lack of plot twist. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing if they gave us more options.
I particularly wanted a "Side with Loghain" option.

Considering some of the choices you have to make/can make....

[Korva]

I like the game, but despite some very emotionally intense moments which I truly loved, overall I feel a bit "meh" too. It's mainly because player choices and actions seem to matter so little that I suspect you can play the game as a total saint, as a total sh*tstain, or by rolling a die in every conversation to determine your replies, and you will get almost exactly the same plot development. There are too few consequences, especially negative consequences for "evil" actions. The Landsmeet is a "good" example for that.

It also feels like the origins matter very little and are sidelined very quickly between Ostagar and the epilogue. I would very much have liked to find my PC's dear big brother (human noble origin) and have an emotional reunion. Instead, he only shows up at my funeral and might as well be talking about the weather for all the emotion he shows.

Lastly, as is sadly often the case with a big plot "hook", the Blight and the Warden's own taint also feel very ... distant. There is no urgency, no real sense of danger or being affected by what's in your blood. You get two dragon dreams. Your camp is attacked once. That's it. You never develop a darkspawn sense despite the game supposedly taking place over a year or more. It was the same in the BG series (the godsblood which I think would be THE focus of the game is mostly sidelined and does very little) and KotOR (you get a lightsaber, fancy Force powers, and a handful of weird dreams but no greater sense of connection with the Force or Bastila). Maybe it's just me, but I always find myself wishing for a much tighter and more meaningful focus on the "big" things and how they affect the protagonist.

[Dee-Jay]

Well, I liked the fact that you weren't clichéd into decisions like in previous BioWare games. Take Kotor for example where you would decide early on, weather or not to play as an evil or good character. Then you would simply solve every problem the same way.

In DAO every decision had to be weighed by itself. There weren't always easy way outs. Some did reward you at the final battle allowing access to more powerful units.



But I don't want to derail this thread by talking about the decisions made.



I just feel that, after working on this title for so long, they should have come up with a better story than "random evil force rises and hero must join elite force to finally destroy evil by killing the dragon archdemon".

I liked the decisions in DAO. Most of them were hard choices and it was more about keeping in line with your party members, rather than your evtil/good mentality.

[mopotter]

Kerridan Kaiba wrote...

mopotter wrote...

 I feel like a grumpy old lady and I probably am. I am disappointed,

I love the game. I love the interaction with the other characters, the voice acting and the story. But I HATE with capital letters the fact that in order for both wardens to survive your female has to send her lover to have sex with a beautiful woman.  

If I'm playing a guy, then great. I'll go have sex with the beautiful women to survive, but my female mage would much prefer to kill her and do the stupid ritual myself.

This drives me nuts. Once in a while I want a nice romantic happy ending and in order to ride off into the sunset with my gray warden lover, I have to send him to witch girl and I have to leave the room, literally. (my husband laughs at me). I just can not fathom what the writers were thinking (or thinking with) when they did this.

I was looking forward to playing DA in the mornings and ME2 in the evenings for the next few years. Looks like as soon as ME2 comes out I'll be spending my time with Shepard and her crew at least until someone comes up with a mod that fixes this thorn in my heart.

There's a whole group of girls here that agree with you. Do a search on Alistair and you'll find them.

Have and chatted about it.  I'm thinking about writing a term paper on it. 

[druidofwarp]

bobsmyuncle wrote...

Kerridan Kaiba wrote...

mopotter wrote...

 I feel like a grumpy old lady and I probably am. I am disappointed,

I love the game. I love the interaction with the other characters, the voice acting and the story. But I HATE with capital letters the fact that in order for both wardens to survive your female has to send her lover to have sex with a beautiful woman.  

If I'm playing a guy, then great. I'll go have sex with the beautiful women to survive, but my female mage would much prefer to kill her and do the stupid ritual myself.

This drives me nuts. Once in a while I want a nice romantic happy ending and in order to ride off into the sunset with my gray warden lover, I have to send him to witch girl and I have to leave the room, literally. (my husband laughs at me). I just can not fathom what the writers were thinking (or thinking with) when they did this.

I was looking forward to playing DA in the mornings and ME2 in the evenings for the next few years. Looks like as soon as ME2 comes out I'll be spending my time with Shepard and her crew at least until someone comes up with a mod that fixes this thorn in my heart.

There's a whole group of girls here that agree with you. Do a search on Alistair and you'll find them.

Feel free to PM me if you want to find where the fangirls hang out. Although I'll say up front that angst fic is insanely popular in this fandom. I hope you're happy with yourself, GAIDER.

Hahaha and you'll never outnumber the guys who shed a tear over Morrigan leaving. Maybe if you look at it from the perspective that your man probably picked up a few tricks from the young witch you can see it as a fairer trade

[mopotter]

Herr Uhl wrote...

Taleroth wrote...

Those girls are mad, I say. MAD

Yes, go with the gay elf or Frenchie if you want happy!

I have of course.  and when I'm the guy I go for Morrigan.  I like choices and options. 

[Sir Ulrich Von Lichenstien]

Faerell Gustani wrote...

I agree about the lack of plot twist. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing if they gave us more options.
I particularly wanted a "Side with Loghain" option.

There is, it is called the "Spare him" option, although you can easily RP it that your character madly idolised him and all the way through thinks that all this trouble he is causing is the work of a certain... Rendon Howe and you set out to make him see sense and redeem himself before it is too late.

As for other twists, well going on the basis of you believing Anora's story bout being kidnapped and if you were to take a hothead approach, you could run into a bit of a twist at Howe's estate and/or if you then went on to push for Alastair to be king without speaking to Anora, you then also get another chance to be stabbed in the back by Anora at the Landsmeet.

Oh and for another slight twist, play dwarf commoner.

Course for a twist created by you, you could play a city elf and then do something really nasty when you get back to the alienage (if it is possible to do a certain few acts with them?)

[mopotter]

[

[/quote]

Hahaha and you'll never outnumber the guys who shed a tear over Morrigan leaving. Maybe if you look at it from the perspective that your man probably picked up a few tricks from the young witch you can see it as a fairer trade

[/quote]

My mage can out trick Morrigan any day (or night) of the week.  She had a whole library of restricted books and used to sneek in and read them.  Especially the 250 ways to.......  Then there was that cute mage in her history of magic class.  :happy: 

No.  When I want to survive and keep him around, I do send Alistair to her and I leave the room.  My husband laughs at me.  But it is a plot dissapointment. 

I think David Gaider is a very good writer.  All of the people who work on the game are good.  They made me care about the characters.  Mr. Gaider also told me in his books that a gray warden could get pregnant and in the game, that a gray warden could get someone pregnant.  With magic my mage should have been able to do that ritual.  <sigh> 

[bobsmyuncle]

She probably could have, but who'd teach it to her? Morrigan? What's in it for her if she does? She might actually want to help you (or I believe she does) but she's honest about getting something out of this too (the old god). She's not going to let you have everything.



And for those of you who think Alistair OR Morrigan had any fun that night, lol. If hate sex had never existed before then those two would have invented it. I actually feel worse about my character ruining his romantic ideas about sex than I do about the event actually occurring. He really does not want to sleep with her, and the PC persuades him to do it anyway.



But making us disgusted and mad was probably the intention there, so... kudos to them for succeeding.

[The Capital Gaultier]

The plot is excellent. I've read a lot of books that were magnitudes worse than DA:O and they don't have to accommodate alternative story lines.

[SeanMurphy2]

I think the main storyline revelations were Alistair being heir and Morrigans intentions for joining the party. Also each of the mid game locations has a self contained mystery. There is the disappearance of Branka, the broodmother, the origins of the werewolves and the what happened at Redcliffe.

But I think the structure of Dragon Age is ambitious. In the mid game there is a split focus on Loghain's reasons at Ostager, a civil war, the darkspawn invasion and the unrelated problems happening in the mid game locations. As well as having to introduce the lore of the game.

Modifié par SeanMurphy2, 18 décembre 2009 - 02:07 .

[rabbitchannel]

Dee-Jay wrote...

So, I really loved Dragon Age and let it own me completely for over a week. I played through the game, staying up until 9 AM once. So I really enjoyed it and think it's a great game. While it was hard, and frustrating at some points, overall it was a great game.

However, looking back I can't help but feel a little let down when looking at the plot. It was somehow, just a little bit to straight  forward and lacked a twist before the final. I mean the side-plots were great, the characters were great and there was a lot of love and detail in the world. I also know one could read up a lot in the books about the lore, but tbh....I don't take 2 min reading breaks while playing an immersive game.

After all, in a nutshell the plot is:
-Demonic Evil Force rises - no real reason given, besides that it's a reoccuring event and what the intro says.
-Main character is drafted into an elite "Anti-Evil Force" - Hello Mass Effect, anyone?
-Main Character has to reunite the races - Plot devides here, with every race having their own story.
-Main Character must end the civial war - Lorghain is dealt with, his motives for his deeds seem a little unsatisfying.
-With the nation united you fight the drakspawn and end the blight by killing the archdemon.


I'm still not quite sure I'm getting my point across. I just felt that it was lacking a twist. After uniting the tribes, the plot is just too straight forward to the end. We knew from a very early stage in that the Dragon was the Archdemon and killing it would end the blight.
We didn't know why Loghain betrayed his king early in the game, but when dealing with him, there is no revealing twist. Loghain really just is a selfish person.
If you think the fact that a Grey Warden must sacrifice himself or the Ritual Morrigain offers you an epic twist, then meh. The Grey Warden thing was predictable due to the Grey Warden Motto and Morrigains Ritual really didn't have a big effect on the outcome.

Comparing it with Mass Effect there was just a lot more build up and tension towards the finale. While Dragon Age is still the overall better game, when it comes to story telling, it falls a little short, in my opinion anyway.

Agree wholeheartedly! There was much better build up and tension in the finale of ME. Gave me that truly epic feel. When I learned Loghain betrayed us I was expecting a secret reason. Maybe he was right and the wardens had fallen. Maybe Cailan(?) had underlying motives. That sort of thing. In fact, it would have been good if in the end, we spoke to the archdemon and it was revealed that it was a twisted abomination with the conscience of both the dragon and the god conflicting within it and the taint had corrupted it so much that it couldn't fight it. Maybe we caught some spark of what the god used to be and how tragic it was to have fallen from such a mighty stature to the leader of a blight. SOMETHING. But no, the cards were on the table and even those that weren't at first (Riordan, , Alastair's heritage) didn't raise an eyebrow. The only things that shocked me were: How to kill the Archdemon and how the taint shortens lifespans. 

[Astranagant]

Not really, I'm used to fantasy stories not straying far from Tolkien tropes at this point. But I feel more like Morrigan's Archbaby is going to shape up to be a bigger deal than the darkspawn anyway.

[Curlain]

Archdemon: No, I am your father, Warden 

More seriously I liked the plot on the whole, the characters were interesting and I think it was from them the most interesting delveopments came, particularly the character twists at the end. As for the darkspawn I don't necessarily mind an all out force of destruction to face (it works in Aliens, and you still have interesting characters and villans in the form of the Company in that), also I found the questions raised about how the darkspawn came to be, and the anicent origins of them, the 'Old Gods' (if they exist) etc quite interesting, with potentially more interesting and meaty terriority to go into the further DA games.

As a first part it was good, origins could have been better tied into the main story, but they down ok, and I'm hopeful that now the base is laid, the next one might go into things only suggested or raised as lore in the Codex now

Modifié par Curlain, 18 décembre 2009 - 01:49 .

[mopotter]

bobsmyuncle wrote...

She probably could have, but who'd teach it to her? Morrigan? What's in it for her if she does? She might actually want to help you (or I believe she does) but she's honest about getting something out of this too (the old god). She's not going to let you have everything.

And for those of you who think Alistair OR Morrigan had any fun that night, lol. If hate sex had never existed before then those two would have invented it. I actually feel worse about my character ruining his romantic ideas about sex than I do about the event actually occurring. He really does not want to sleep with her, and the PC persuades him to do it anyway.

But making us disgusted and mad was probably the intention there, so... kudos to them for succeeding.

In my mind, where all of this takes place, Morrigan had to read the ritual scroll before she could do the ritual, too complicated to memorize.  Or I could have found an old copy of it in the circle and not know what it was for until later.  So in my mind, I could have killed her and taken the scroll or found it.    In this story she is not my friend.  

I totally agree with you that Alistair and Morrigan did not have any fun.  I've thought about this.  (probably way too much)  and if I were  asked to have sex with someone I dislike the way they disliked each other, (and I can think of a few talk show host that would fit this idea) I'd say no.  I'd say "you don't love me if you would ask me to do this with bla bla"  and I'd rather be dead and with the make.  I'm of the opinion that years down the road he will resent it and whatever feelings he had would slowly disappear. 

Yes they did succeed. 

[Herr Uhl]

Curlain wrote...
Archdemon: No, I am your father, Warden 

Well, it was thank to an archdemon that you could become a warden, so in a sense...

[druidofwarp]

Too bad Sandal isnt romanceable

[Saurel]

Yeah I can't say I cared for the plot. Not that the subquests and such weren't fun or that dialog wasn't good.



Don't know if it needed a twist per-se....it definitely needed more though.



The story not being as gripping as it could have been is part of the reason I fall into the small camp that believes the whole games purpose was to introduce the Demon Baby.

[InverseReality]

After all the hoopla about "dark fantasy" and "hard choices" and "consequences for your actions"... I wasn't looking for a plot twist, but I *was* hoping that *someone* would actually hold me accountable for my actions. I wanted more moral ambiguity, more genuinely difficult moral choices, Sure, Bioware took away their usual alignment scale, but that didn't mean anything. It was still a clear cut good vs. bad game, and in that sense, the story was a huge disappointment.

[kormesios]

I agree with the OP, roughly. Liked the game, but the story lacked a little extra oomph when unfolding.

It's not necessarily that it needed a "twist", but that it completely lacked any feeling you were investigating, uncovering, or learning about the main plot. You get told about the blight, archdemon, grey wardens, and learn about Loghain soon enough. After that . . . well, the fact that you could stand in Flemeth's hut after Ostagar, take one guess at the major players, which side they were on, and the outline of the major story quests over the next 80 hours of gameplay, and get *every single one correct*, is pretty amazing.

Flip side is it only matters on the first play through, so I had more fun on my second one than I expected.

[SeanMurphy2]

I think the mid game is too cluttered. Your attention can be split between Loghain, darkspawn and werewolves/abominations/zombies. So it is harder to build up tension or mystery. I would have liked them to split the mid game into two.

The darkspawn would not immediately invade from the Wilds. Instead the focus is on Loghain and the political situation after the death of the King.  There would be a plausible threat from Orlais and more mystery about why Loghain retreated.  Your party would also be viewed as outlaws and hated. You would need to resolve the civil war and convince people that the Blight is a serious theat to the Kingdom.

The first part would focus on Loghain and the civil war. The three main locations would be Redcliffe, Highever and Denerim.

In the second part the darkspawn would invade and you need to use the treaties. The three new locations would be
Elves, Orzammer and Circle Tower.