30 réponses à ce sujet

[IntoTheDarkness]

+less cliche
+no super special hero
+more personal and plausible plots
+no evil force trying to bring the world down to its knees
+the endings are not as predictable and obvious as DA:O
+hero is more humane and believable
+more political plots



-less epic
-there is a big jump between chapters
-mage hawke running with templars is very, very absurd
-choices have less impacts





overal I think DA2 has a better story than DA:O.

[Bleachrude]

I would say that DA:O main storyline is incidental....aka "Defeat the archdemon".

It's similar to ME2 where the main plotline of "Defeat the collectors" is somewhat incidental to the recruitment/loyalty missions...

[Sir George Parr]

The main stories of Origins,ME2 and ME3 are very similar.Its very generic stuff which we love all the same.Dragon Age 2 on the hand is brave enough to try and do something different. Its an experiment in story telling that for reasons discussed else where doesn't quite pull it off. Being in development for another year would have helped, no doubt.A longer title would helped people know they were getting something different. From what i read else where the game should have stuck with its working title Dragon Age:Exodus
I still like the game with all its short comings because i got a very good voiced protagonist in Lady Hawke.Also i revisit Kirkwall more often than Origins. Such is the power of Jo Wyatt's voice acting.
But going back to your original point. your not Nuts,just in a minority.

Modifié par XM-417, 31 décembre 2012 - 05:26 .

[Get Magna Carter]

 yes;)
(sorry, couldn't resist)

More proper answer-
I felt Dragon Age Origins was an epic story while Dragon Age 2 was a mish mash of multiple shorter stories
In many ways the stories of dragon age 2 seem better than the story of dragon age origins but with 3 catches
1) The Dragon Age Origins story is more epic
2) the hopping back and forth between fragments of different stories in DA 2 make it feel more disjointed
3) As a game, the DAO has the player feeling more like the hero, Hawke seems heroic in some ways but in others seems little more than a witness to events he/she has little real influence over. 

[Reikilea]

Only in a term of a personal story. Yes of course. Funny that it was only Hawke that seemed to change throught the years. However I appreciate that Bioware braveness. Such an personal story isnt really common in a gaming world. It does happen, especially this jumping between years (Fable, Withcer, Assasin) and focus on family and the individuality of the main hero. But the problem was, that it was Hawke´s story. Not the players. So the story may be more personal, but the feeling I had when I played it, wasn´t personal for me. Unlike the DA:O when you really got to impersonate your character.

In term of fictional world and space the story is set in, then no.DA2 had too many inconsistent plot points. So that mean another no in a terms of logical narrative. Especially blaming everythign on evil magic. Actually was somethign else there except evil magic...

And now, everyone wil think I´m completely heartless bastard or somthing , but I didnt like the way Leandra´s dead was presented. I felt like writers were looking for a way how to justifiy this extreme hate for magic that resides in Thedas. Andf your mother had to by killed by complely mad evil Mage so you never had the chance to think - Like, player here you have this, please throttle yourself with this evil magic, so you have a perfect reason to really hate mages and sides with templars. I dont mind it, everyone needs reason to hate, but to me it felt too one dimensional.  In comparision DA, the main quast elves vs werevolves - you had three choices how to end the conflict and everyone of them (even the evil one when you kill all elves) was explained perfectly. I miss this kind of choice, because I dont really like beeing forced to think something especially when my mother is dying. I kind of love these moral debates I had when I played DA:O, Witcher or F:New Vegas. Thats one of the reasons why people love DA:O, its all those moral choices.  What you got in DA2 was: evil mage, evil mage, mad evil mage and one disgraced quanari. Or and one templar corrupted by ... magic

So my only problem with story its too one dimensional. But rarely goes deeper. It works in some storyarcs, like Anders, Isabela or Merril storyline in a bit everything else just stagnates. So the initial story idea may be better, but the way some storylines were handled, well that not so much.

I stis thing that premise for DA2 is a great idea, but the whole story feels too rushed and forced. However if they had time, they could have come up with a new Citizen Kane of videogame storytelling. So less evil mages and more quanari.

Modifié par Reikilea, 31 décembre 2012 - 02:33 .

[Faust1979]

In some ways DAII is better and in other ways not so much. Love the multiple stories in this game much better than the first

[Asch Lavigne]

I posted this is another thread that was about the same topic:

I highly disagree. I felt like they tried to mash two plots (Qunari and Mages) into one game and it didn't fit together. The mage thing was a disaster and the Qunari plot didn't have any purpose in Act 1. In the end I didn't care at all about the mages and was only interested in the Qunari.

Also, becoming the Champion was meaningless. I mean in the end all it did was make Hawke Kirkwall's official errand boy/girl instead of being the unofficial one, which is what he/she was for the first two acts. Hawke may have had a title but had no power, he/she was still again, an errand boy. Go here and do this for this person over and over. Champion take my side, no mine! That's all. Hawke may have had a role in the war's start but it was inevitable that it was going to happen anyway, Hawke was pointless. Maybe in 3 when you try and end the war Hawke will be more prominent in getting whatever side you sided with to back down/call a truce/win or whatever. I can see that happening. I also don't understand why Cassandra needs the Warden. Just because he/she ended a Blight does not mean everyone will listen to him/her about the mages and templars. Heck, outside of Ferelden no one cares about the Warden and being a Warden itself doesn't have any power or purpose when it comes to anything other than darkspawn.

[thats1evildude]

Faerunner wrote...

Rags to Riches plotline not cliche enough for you?

If we go by the internet's definition of cliche, which is "a thing that has been done before." Of course, everything's been done before, but why should we let reality stand in the way of pointless whining?

Modifié par thats1evildude, 30 décembre 2012 - 01:25 .

[The real PBALL]

I think that at it's skeleton, DA2 has a lot more going for it, though DAO also had to contend with itself in both it's scope(a whole nation, as opposed to one city) and that it had to set up the world at the same time as telling it's story(where most people hadn't read the books). DA2 was able to say "Here's where we are, here's when it is" and hit the ground running. That's a big advantage.

[lil yonce]

I loved DA2. I now prefer it to DA:O. It was a compelling story of human circumstance with great commentary on Thedosian politics, factions, corruption, and on the ugly side of human nature. In many ways it was superior to DA:O. Just logged 70 hours with all DLC. Trying to replay Origins now and I just feel unmotivated to do the same.

Modifié par Youth4Ever, 01 janvier 2013 - 05:29 .

[Faust1979]

I like that your companions have on going story arcs as opposed to the way it's done in the first Dragon Age you do their one quest and it's finished. Here each quest builds on the last and tells they're story it's awesome and there is far more going on than just the threat of the Dark Spawn. It's an exciting storyline

[Hurbster]

The ham-fisted last act ruins any chance of me thinking the plot was better than DA:O, I'm afraid.

[Blazomancer]

Both the plots are awesome in their own way. Good luck trying to decide which is better.

[Sharn01]

Despite its many flaws the overall story of 2 was probably a little better then origins until act 3, at which point in all went into the crapper.

[Jeffonl1]

Sharn01 wrote...

Despite its many flaws the overall story of 2 was probably a little better then origins until act 3, at which point in all went into the crapper.

DA2 has multiple themes, creating a compelling story, but the Origins was much more coherent.  

For example I still cant wrap my mind around Anders blowing up the High Cleric:  why didn't he blow up the Templar hall? 

Modifié par Jeffonl1, 31 décembre 2012 - 04:04 .

[wiccame]

Anders blew up the grand cleric to stop the chance of compromise as she was always the one they went to to settle things.

[IntoTheDarkness]

wiccame wrote...

Anders blew up the grand cleric to stop the chance of compromise as she was always the one they went to to settle things.

Why not blow Meridith up instead?

DA2 would have more realistic story than DA:O if it weren't for Anders...

[wiccame]

Because they always went to the grand cleric, resulting in nothing changing. Anders wanted all out war...better to die now then die slowly as he basically says. Also the grand cleric is higher up in the chantry chain than knight commander and a better target to get the result he wanted.

True...Anders was a real pain in DA2

Modifié par wiccame, 31 décembre 2012 - 11:22 .

[jarhead8741]

DA2 had a more complex story, but DA:O had a more epic story.

[NightfallXIII]

Personally, I liked DA:O's story better. I felt like it was one good story, or a couple including Awakening and what not. It was a little cliche, but I suppose that in some ways DA2 was also. As with DA2, the story felt mish-mashed. Being the Champion wasn't really an accomplishment either, since you really did nothing as Champion except do other people's chores, the same as before. In fact, it's almost as if you never really became champion in the first place. There wasn't really much of a main plot; it was just side quests, complete a really unrelated event, and then something big happens. We didnt' even get a real ending, and both were pretty much the same, just with slight diffrences. Most of the companions I felt were really annoying and whiny too. All Anders talked about was the mages, all Fenris talked about was his slavery and why mages stink, all Carver does is whine about how you're more awesome than he is, Bethany just talks about is the Circle, and Merrill just talked about magic in general. None of them really had any layers. Actually, Isabella and Varric are the only ones I could have a conversation about more than one subject about. Granted, I haven't gotten "The Exiled Prince" yet. In DA:O, the characters had more to them.

[Corker]

A long time ago, I saw someone on a forum somewhere comment that DA2 had a remarkable, innovative premise that was not well-executed, while DAO had a very basic premise that was extremely well-executed. I think that was very insightful.

DA2 was trying to do a lot that was new, with not enough time or resources to do it well. It certainly didn't help that the marketing touted it as Hawke's "Rise to Power," but that wasn't actually the game. The Rise to Power climaxes at the end of Act 2, when you become Champion. The actual story, the one Varric is telling Cassandra, is "How Hawke was involved in the start of the mage/templar war." Trouble is, that's... not much of a story. There's little/no arc, just a series of events that conclude with the Chantry Boom. (There *is* an attempt to give the narrative some shape in the three-act structure, but I don't think it was very effective.)

Many folks on BSN commented, when the game came out, that it should have ended after Act Two, and I think that's telling. That's the Rise to Power. It's the rags-to-riches story. It's a narrative we all know the shape of, and it's the one we were told by the marketing to expect, and it *ended* when Hawke became Champion. It's such a powerful story type that trying to subordinate it to the *actual* DA2 story doesn't fully work, I think.

[ThePhoenixKing]

Corker wrote...

A long time ago, I saw someone on a forum somewhere comment that DA2 had a remarkable, innovative premise that was not well-executed, while DAO had a very basic premise that was extremely well-executed. I think that was very insightful.

DA2 was trying to do a lot that was new, with not enough time or resources to do it well. It certainly didn't help that the marketing touted it as Hawke's "Rise to Power," but that wasn't actually the game. The Rise to Power climaxes at the end of Act 2, when you become Champion. The actual story, the one Varric is telling Cassandra, is "How Hawke was involved in the start of the mage/templar war." Trouble is, that's... not much of a story. There's little/no arc, just a series of events that conclude with the Chantry Boom. (There *is* an attempt to give the narrative some shape in the three-act structure, but I don't think it was very effective.)

Many folks on BSN commented, when the game came out, that it should have ended after Act Two, and I think that's telling. That's the Rise to Power. It's the rags-to-riches story. It's a narrative we all know the shape of, and it's the one we were told by the marketing to expect, and it *ended* when Hawke became Champion. It's such a powerful story type that trying to subordinate it to the *actual* DA2 story doesn't fully work, I think.

Very well said. It also doesn't help matters that Hawke's rise to power isn't really all its cracked up to be. By the end, you still have no real, demonstratable authority, whereas in Awakening, there were a bunch of side-quests and decisions that reflected your role and authority as both Warden-Commander of Ferelden and Arl of Amaranthine. Hawke as the Champion is very similar to Hawke as the refugee; you merely take orders from more important people and have a nicer place. It still believe that if Act III had been about Hawke not as the Champion, but as the Viscount (maybe with a city-management system too), DA2 would have been a lot better.

I must join the consensus here: a major advantage of DA:O was that it's story was a lot more coherent, and indeed had some direction. Everything eventually built up towards the battle with the Archdemon; while there were plenty of side-quests to do and factions to interact with and flesh out the setting, you always had an end-goal, which kept things moving. And Origins was a game you could ultimately win. The Archdemon was a foe to be fought and beaten, whether you took the final blow or not, whereas the Mage/Templar crisis could not be resolved, you could only try to survive it. (On that note, I had a similar issue with ME3; the Reapers could not be beaten, only endured).

This touches upon another thing worth mentioning: in DA2, there was this general sense of deprotagonization (http://wiki.rpg.net/...protagonization). In Origins, not only could you create your hero and have him or her act as you see fit, you also had a much more substantive impact on the world around you. In DA2, so much is railroaded: the plot, the actions of so many characters including Anders and Elthina, the dialogue system to some extent, you don't have that impact and agency that a good RPG really needs you too. 

With DA2, I felt that the story really would have been better suited to a more serialized format, such as a series of novels (like the Sharpe books) or comics (with each act forming a story arc for trade paperback format).  The three act structure in game ultimately didn't work out because each act felt disconnected from the others. It's one of things I did like about Legacy and Mark of the Assassin. Flawed as they were, they were cohesive stories, with solid beginning, middle and endpoints,

Also, the characters in Origins were much more multilayered and interesting, where as in DA2, too often they basically became either plot devices or crude archetypes for the various competing ideologies. In DA2, you could rarely get Anders and Fenris to talk about anything other than how they hate templars/mages, while in Origins, you could chat with your companions about a much wider variety of subjects, some not even relevant to the overall plot (Leliana asking you about shoes, for example). That's not to say that all of the DA2 companions are bad. Merrill, Aveline and Varric remain favourites, but overall, those in Origins had considerably more depth to them.

So yeah, Dragon Age: Origins all the way.

[jmlzemaggo]

I could probably replay DA2 multiple times, and even more.
I played DA:O only once.
I could probably replay DA2 multiple times, and even more.... without really caring about what is happening in it.
I played DA:O only once, just as I'm supposed to live my very life, only once...

according to the very little I've heard around that very particular matter so far...

Modifié par jmlzemaggo, 04 janvier 2013 - 10:51 .

[AndarianTD]

@OP: No, because it does.