What I liked about Origins and DA 2, and what I didn’t like
about each and what I hope Bioware does for DA3. In no particular order
Combat
Somewhere in between Origins super slow combat and DA2’s exaggerated
teleporting rogues and swinging greatswords like they were little daggers.
Origins realistic combat was good, I liked it and it fell well within the ‘Baldur’s
Gate Successor’ that DA was supposed to be, while DA2 went too far from what
made DAO such a great game. That said, faster combat is good, but only up to a point. Maybe make 2hers hit once in 1.5 sec instead of faster than 1 hit a sec or 1 hit in 3.5 sec.
Art and Graphics
DA2’s art was beautiful, outside of Kirkwall anyway, while
DAO’s occasionally felt rather empty. I like the artistic direction DA2 went
in.
Voiced Protagonist (Very Important)
I enjoyed having a voiced protagonist, but I really didn’t
like the consequences of having a voiced protagonist (from here on in called
VP). A VP is great it makes your character more believable and makes
conversations seem less one sided. On the other hand it also meant that you
were stuck with a human character, because it would have been 3 times as
expensive to do Voice Overs for a dwarven protagonist and an elven protagonist.
If given a choice between having more character diversity and having a VP I
would pick character diversity. The only way I could support a VP in future DA
games is if bioware finds a way to allow you to maintain character diversity
and have a VP.
Note: what I mean by character diversity is that your
character in DAO could have come from one of six different backgrounds and that
affected the story differently at certain points in the game. (DA3 doesn’t need
6 origin stories, but being able to pick from being a human, elf, dwarf and
maybe even Qunari would be great)
Dialogue Wheel
I enjoyed it, unlike other people I was never surprised by
what my Hawke did, but at it did have some draw backs. By limiting responses to
either 1) Helpful/Friendly, 2) Sarcastic/Witty, or 3) Aggressive/Douchy I felt
DA2 took something away from us. When you talk to someone you feel like ‘I am
making a Diplomatic Hawke, so at every opportunity I need to select the #1
option’. I didn’t like this, I preferred DAO’s ability to select different
dialogue options without being told ‘this is the angry response’. If Bioware
intends to continue this trend I would ask that you at least include a fourth
choice because being pigeon holed into Friendly, Witty or Angry isn’t all there
is in life. Maybe split angry/aggressive into 2 categories, one which is nicer
but still direct and no-nonsense and one that remains douchebagy.
Companions
I liked the fact that your companions had a life apart from
following you in DA2, they had houses (or a clinic for Anders) and would visit
each other on occasion. I think this aspect of DA2 should definitely carry over
to DA3 and maybe even be expanded. I.E. have times where companions visit each
other not just because you have a quest to talk to one of them, but just do it
all on their own.
At the same time I felt constricted by DA2’s limited
selection of companions. You had 2 warriors, 2 rogues and 2 mages (plus DLC
char’s) and maybe Beth/Carver at the beginning and end. In DAO you had 3
warriors, 2 rogues, 2 mages and a dog (again plus DLC and ‘secret character’).
The main difference apart from numbers was that Leliana could use daggers or
bows, your choice and Sten could be sword and board if you wanted. You could
pick the companions you wanted[/i] and
then make them fit in your party rather than in DA2 having to pick companions
that would fit and hoping they were who you wanted.
Rival/Friendship system
Awesome! You can change Merrills mind about blood magic (by
the very end of the game, but still it’s possible to have her smash her mirror)
and make Anders regret blowing up the chantry (if rivaled he realizes he was
wrong and wishes you’d killed him ‘long ago’). This system works so much better
than Origins give gifts to make up for them not liking your choices. And
speaking of gifts… the gifts in DA2 were better handled, they would prompt a
convo and depending on your choices in the conversation give you friendship or
rivalry points.
The only bad thing about this system was that it seemed much
too easy to me to max out my companions by the beginning of act 2 and then the
whole rest of the game I could pick any option I wanted and their points wouldn’t
change. I do think locking their points when you reach the cap should remain,
BUT Origins giving increasing benefits as you progressed should also return.
I.E. have a companion bonus at say 50% friend/rival and then improve it at 100%
then also make it take more points to reach the max, thereby making it seem
more like a journey and less like a rush to the finish.
Companion Trees (Important to me)
I liked this idea at first, until I got a look at Anders
tree and my Mages Spirit Healer tree. Anders is just a lame version of spirit
healer, he doesn’t get improved healing talents and his ‘panacea’ isn’t even
half as good as hawkes (Hawkes does 2x healing rate and effects bigger area AND
costs less). The main problem was that the dev’s treated a companion tree as
though it were one of Hawke’s trees and limited the number of points you could
invest into it. If instead they realized Hawke gets 2 specializations and each
companion only gets one they could have given 30-50% more talents to each
companion tree and still had them smaller than Hawkes but large enough to feel
useful. They could have flushed out Anders healing abilities, maybe not given
him Vitality or Second Chance to keep those unique to Hawke, but giving him
improvements to group heal, revive and panacea. Had they made Companion trees
about 1.5x the size of a normal tree then they would have been great.
Specializations
This is one my biggest problems with DA2. If you were a
female mage who practiced blood magic you could have sex with Anders and he
would love you, but he would always[/i]
hate Merrill, no matter what, just because she was a blood mage. Hell if you[/i] were a blood mage you could run
around saying blood magic is bad, makes no sense. Either have characters react
to your specializations or include specializations that aren’t provocative.
(Only include blood mage if people can respond to the fact that you use
forbidden magic)
One other concern was the lack of diversity compared to DAO
in terms of specializations (3 in DA2, 4 in DAO or 6 with xpac). Sure some of
the abilities/ideas were moved from specializations to normal skill trees, but
as a mage if you want to go offensive and don’t want to be stuck with healing
aura you only have 2 choices: force mage (which has some cool benefits, but was
lack luster compared to blood mage in my opinion) or blood mage. Warrior Spec’s
didn’t really include something that would help a tank (Templar gets close, but
Reaver and Beserker are pure dps adding trees, none compare to Guardian). I
enjoyed being a Champion and shouting warcrys (you can kinda do this in DA2
with certain trees, but I liked the specialization). Basically more choices is
good.
On a similar note there was no ‘melee mage’ while in DAO
there were 2, either shapeshifter or arcane warrior.
In terms of the fact that you had to unlock the spec’s that
was cool, but ultimately pointless since they unlocked by account rather than
by play through.
Edit: forgot this
Noncombat Skills
I miss them. In DAO the crafting and persuasion skills were
great, a good rpg has some kind of persuasion checks (ME its renegade/parage,
DA just a straight up persuasion check, DA2.. nuthin). Please bring them back!
Modifié par ghostmessiah202, 18 août 2012 - 11:45 .
Retour en haut
While I do prefer a voiced Protagonist I prefer character choices more. (Although Neverwinter Nights and Baldurs Gate both had silent protagonists and they deff weren't JRPGs but your personal experience with RPGs is doubtless different than mine)
