Yup, it's the community. The distinction between what the fanbase is talking about and what is actually being marketed is not hugely apparent for many.
Well, you see Mr. Phoenix, it works like this: there are "true" fans of CRPGs and then there are the...other....sorts of fans, especially those console gamers. Blech! See, "true fans" want an isometric perspective. True fans also know that romances could only ever exist by taking away from the rest of the game (true fans also know more about game development and design than actual developers and designers!). They believe this even though they don't think that way about DAO, and even though romance is not all of what has been discussed or marketed. Characters and story in a character and story heavy game as less important than the interface, after all, Mr. Phoenix. Not that the interface is unimportant. It is. It's just that real fans know it's the only mechanic that matters. True fans know something is amiss because we haven't seen the tactical camera yet (which might not be the implication of something far worse, but shh) and complain even when Allan Schumacher has confirmed information about pausing and moving the camera, which we knew about since E3. As said, Mr. Phoenix, true gamers also don't think we've seen anything about the mechanics, even though we have, more than once even. Because, again, only the isometric perspective is a game mechanic. Nothing else. Without it, we can't know that DAI won't be a cake walk with zero strategy, like all non-isometric perspective games are (and a cakewalk isn't what DA2 was on hard and nightmare, but plenty do feel that way about the normal difficulty; it's worth noting, too, that plenty of people believed that DAO was easy when it came out, even on nightmare). Finally, Mr. Phoenix, losing the isometric POV and being a wide open world is antithetical to True RPGs™.
Now, Mr Phoenix, you may ask: do these attitudes described above apply to everyone who likes or prefers an isometric perspective or that value it as a better way to issue commands and make tactical decisions? No. Of course not. I consider myself one of the later. But at times it can seem like the loudest, most frequent voices are those above that I have exaggerated somewhat for effect. Many fans of the bird's eye view are not at all like what I described above.
To speak without snark and not just to Fiery Phoenix: many celebrated RPGs have become classics with or without an isometric perspective, including old school RPGs like Wizardry and the original Deus Ex. Indie RPGs that use the isometric perspective seem to sell well on Steam and other digital game retailers. No, not as well as franchises, but when has this ever been different in the last 30 years of gaming? And many RPGs were wide open worlds before Oblivion and Skyrim, from Ultima to Might & Magic to Fallouts 1 and 2. Bethesda never had a monopoly on sandbox RPGs, even if they are the most successful in that genre. Arguably, Bethesda isn't as consistent with rich, memorable NPCs as Bioware, while their stories are a "choose your own adventure and, sure, eventually resolve the big story quests." So if Bioware wants to try their hand at the wide-open sandbox RPG market, then cool. I'm not worried about us all coming back here in October saying, "Like Skyrim but..." Doing so simply acknowledges who has set that standard that everything else in that genre is compared to. Like how third person sandbox action games are frequently compared to GTA. Then Saints Row came along and did GTA's formula better, imho. So, I'm not worried about DAI being open-world.
Nothing said in the previous paragraph is a case against isometric perspectives, btw. I like them and enjoy plenty of games with that POV, including ones that aren't RPGs like Blood Bowl. I just don't believe that my indifference makes me the enemy of any sort of crusade for the "true" DA experience, as if the bird's eye view and tactics panel we the only things that defined the original game. The later of which was OK but greatly improved with the advanced tactics mod and gastank's rules fixpack. I do get that the isometric perspective is more "old school" and that its loss might feel too modern. But as if it is the one true mechanic that decides if the rest of the game's mechanics will be good or bad, deep or shallow?
(Honestly, DAO is being held up on this pedestal by some fans that even as someone who loves it, and considers it one of his favorite games, thinks it shouldn't be on. Certainly it's combat is, based on earlier posts in this thread. Really, the slower calculation resulted in moments of being hit and taking damage when far away from an opponent because the calculation happens as the attack starts, not on if the opponent hits when you're near them. I could do the same to said opponents, slashing empty air but damaging the targeted enemy even though they had moved away. That's not "tactical", that's cheap and would work better in a turn-based RPG. Not a real time or pause-and-play one. Perhaps some use pause-and-play as a replacement for turn-based? I can't see how. At best it allows for controlled chaos. One game that did successfully incorporate skill with real time was Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines; meaning you couldn't just point, shoot, and hit at further than very close range until your skill got better. But even then you could avoid getting hit in melee by moving out of the way if you reacted quickly enough--and by quickly I mean in terms of player spatial awareness and timing, not a speed mechanic. Even Mount & Blade's somewhat complex mechanics still require one to actually land the blow, not just start the swing. And DAO's mechanics weren't that much more complex than DA2's, if you're talking about attributes, spells, talents, and combat calculations. There are calculations going on to detect if one hits, causes a critical, if damage is resisted, etc. I certainly didn't hit better or faster for clicking with greater frequency. DA2 does have a new mechanic wherein a unsuccessful attack results in a "glancing blow" that does less damage instead of a miss. This means, unlike DAO, you can never not land some kind of hit--same thing with enemies it seems. That's a questionable design choice, but the point stands that faster clicking does not mean more attacks and hits, at least on the PC. So blame the faster speed on a better optimized game engine and the removal of a BS mechanic--hit before you hit!--if anything.)
Moreover, it's not as if no other games released in the last 5 years haven't had an isometric or bird's eye POV (e.g. Shadowrun Returns, Dungeons of Dredmor, Cthulhu Saves the World, and, later this year, Pillars of Eternity--and that's just the RPGs; you've also got tactical shooters like Frozen Synapse, tower defense games like Sol Survivor, and strategy games like Shogun 2 Total War). Isometric/bird's eye perspective games haven't died, not by a long shot. I suppose one could argue that they aren't the dominant camera style for RPGs and that'd be fair.
And as far as "ruining the franchise", I'll use the example of Fallout New Vegas. Did it use an isometric POV? No. But it was an excellent follow-up, thematically and story-wise, to Fallouts 1 and 2. So much so, that it works as the third entry in its own trilogy with those two earlier titles. It helps that many of the original devs and writers of the two earlier titles also worked on FNV. The skill and combat mechanics in FNV were arguably as complex as Fallout 1 and 2 as well.
Frankly, I think changing to the sleek, black and gray interface of DA2 from the intricately detailed one of DAO (e.g. the quickbar was a belt, the journal with quest notes and codices was designed to look like a book), is more of a loss than the camera perspective. That flavor gave DAO's user interface, from any camera perspective, a distinct feel and look from, say, a sci-fi action RPG like Mass Effect. I missed it in DA2 and will likely miss it in DAI, even if I like DAI. An even greater loss were the skills, like poison-making, stealing, herbalism, and so on. The return of crafting in DAI, and to the extent crafted items are customizable, will hopefully be a happy thing. Oh, sorry. That's a mechanic we know about but aren't supposed to know about because Bioware hasn't mentioned it even though they have.
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).This is extremely irritating to me. Why do I have such a hard time anticipating what the summaries mean? No idea. Perhaps I'm just not on the same wavelength as the writers?
