You can also involve yourself in the zone-specific storylines which are true also in practice not just formally. If you can get over the fact you won't get any flashy cutscenes for your trouble but only dialogue and codex entries.
Huh? Played normally DAO could be finished with your character around level 18. (by 'normally' I mean without grinding through every of these silly chantry board quests so I guess completionists could squeeze out few more levels out of the game, but then the same can be said about DAI)
Well I am a completionist by nature when I love a game so yeah, I try to obtain everything and finish all quests possible in a playthrough.
The issue with this game as others have noted, is that it's sidequests are boring fetch quests.
I feel like I'm playing an mmo with nobody else in it.
For the people that think I just ran blindly through, I didn't, my completion time was 82 hours because I was trying to complete all objectives but when I saw the story missions I had left I realised there were only 3 (based on trophy titles)
I'm a long time fan of this series but Bioware have really let me down, and I'm clearly not alone, by not delivering a true Dragon Age game.
If you swapped out the returning characters for brand new faces & names, changed the location names and had no reference to previous games this may as well be a totally different series, which I wish it were.
I was expecting Dragon Age 3, I got Skyrim 0.5
-snip-
I can only say that I disagree with everything you've said. BioWare has done a great job of letting us tell a story through our actions in DAI, something that was only marginally possible in DAO, and not possible at all in DA2.
I find it more fun to theorycraft builds than even PLAYING the builds, how messed up is that?
In a well documented game, I would expect this always to be true. Theorycrafting is tons of fun.
DAI is not well documented, however. I wish it were, so I could do more character planning.
I feel like I'm playing an mmo with nobody else in it.
The best kind of MMO, I would argue.
Some MMOs are fun, but I think they'd be more fun if I could play them myself without all those other people getting in the way.
That's also what I did. I found it more atmospheric but emptier from an RP POV than the Hinterlands. But that makes sense, I think, since it's just wilderness.
Right.
I think Storm Coast has more interesting caves. It has that going for it. And there seemed to be less need to jump up cliffs to get places.
That brings me back to your comment about how people would handle BG1. Now that was an empty game and devoid of dialogue by comparison.
They finally made a proper follow-up to BG.
I love the Hinterlands and for different reasons than were said. I love that there are constantly people killing each other all over the fricken place. I love that there is a err... group that I can sway in my favor by closing a rift. I like that there are things that I cannot just completely demolish there even though I'm level 11. I don't even mind the frickin ram meat quest because it has a lot of purpose in doing it and it lets you make a name for yourself as the future Inquisitor. Not to mention that ram leather looks great on my rogue. Am I really a bad person for being addicted to the search function?
I've been playing and trying to finish everything in each area before moving onto another which has lead to a huge gap between story missions, however I didn't think I was this far into actual story.
Now I find myself going into the final mission with 13 tokens on the map still to be dealt with. I'm at level 20 with everyone (which sounds very low considering previous DA games) and I don't even have a specialization.
I've done my best not to look things up but the game has given me no indication of how to get the items to become a Champion/Reaver/Templar....Both Blackwall and Cole are inextricably missing right now and I really don't see a tactical side to killing dragons, you just wail on them and keep barriers casted constantly.
All in all, this game's a huge let down and th eworst in the series because it's lost almost everything the series was built upon.
I was planning on concentrating on story in my 2nd playthrough but I think that will be done in 1 day given the complete lack of story content in this game.
Also,following the end of DA2 and the marketing for DA:I I was expecting th emMage rebellion and war with the Templars to be a big part of this game. It's pretty much addressed and put to bed right at the start of the game.
I hope they keep this as a 'gaiden' sort of game and deliver us fans a proper DA3 soon.
Have the 3 knights that give you specializations shown up yet? If not then that's why. You need to do a specific mission to get them to come to Skyhold if I remember correctly. How are Blackwell and Cole ,missing? I haven't read anything about them leaving if they have already joined the Inquisition. And I totally disagree with the posters who are complaining about the game length. Rignt now I'm at 108 hrs of gameplay and I just started the Hissing Wastes so this game is anything but short.
I don't know what it is about the game? For the first 50 hours I totally loved it, and then suddenly my interest just waned, and now I find it hard to load up and finish. It might have something to do with the characters in game, the dialogue and cut scenes are great, but the levelling up is incredibly boring, all aimed at combat and nothing else, and there's something about endlessly clicking fireballs and lightning bolts that becomes too boring after a while. Call me old fashioned, but there was something much more fun playing a traditional AD & D Mage, where you had to memorise your spells, and then determine the best time to use them. The classes are also very limited and contrived with their one weapon choice, who heard of a rogue being the only class who can use a bow?? And although the landscapes look lovely, they get boring eventually, especially as there seem to be very little dungeons to explore and most of the quests are repetitive and mundane and button bashing.
As I understand it, Mark Darrah was given the task (by EA? and the Bioware top executives) to make game that people could play from 10-110 hours. And so he did as I have understood it. Many gamers have told us here at the BSN DA forums that they have played the game for maybe 15-50-120 hours, depending on their style of play.
As for the length of the game? or the content it, sadly I can't say anything about this as I don't have the game as of yet. But I'm currently playing DA:O for the third time. And this game hasn't aged well, sadly. Everyone seem to have forgotten that in DA:O, suddenly reinforcements also appeared out of thin air (or so it seems). The combat in DA:O is very bad, imo. In fact, DA2's combat is far better than the combat in DA:O.
I agree about the combat in DA2 being better than DAO, never understood teh people who complained about it.
I've played through them both multiple times.
The way I see a game's length is more based on what the game is about, in DA's case the series has always been about character interaction and story.
That's what I'm complaining about, it's the length of the story. It's incredibly short.
Yes, I know that both the prequels had lots of filler sidequests but they felt natural. Every quest in this game is a simple fetch quest, there's very little branching of to get involved in.
And then there's the ridiculous 'collectibles' that are there simply because "OPEN WORLD!!!!! OMG".
Like collecting valuables in Farcry 3 or shooting pigeons in GTA4, it's a needless timewaster, and that's fine if that's your thing, it's not what the game should be about.
Not to mention that most of the shards you collect are in some odd location that you have to jump around like you're climbing a skyrim mountain (you know what I mean), it's like they want to show you how shoddy the game is by making you collecting those things.
I can see why DA has never had a jump button before.
As for Cole & Blackwell being missing, I found out it was mission related but all I had left to do was the final story mission (or wait for war table crap to be done)
Have the 3 knights that give you specializations shown up yet? If not then that's why. You need to do a specific mission to get them to come to Skyhold if I remember correctly. How are Blackwell and Cole ,missing? I haven't read anything about them leaving if they have already joined the Inquisition. And I totally disagree with the posters who are complaining about the game length. Rignt now I'm at 108 hrs of gameplay and I just started the Hissing Wastes so this game is anything but short.
Yeah, they were there and I'd spoken to them, however I just never seemed to get the items required, despite crafting like a beast.
I'm not a fan of constantly gathering herds and stones so the requisition missions got done as I was travelling. Just seems odd that in all those hours (86 as of clearing up the last couple of dragons) I never came across what I needed for the three specialization items, not that they were even needed.
Boss battles are extremely easy in this compared to DA2.
Well, that's the thing -- if you get an open-world game, you get a shorter main quest since more time has to go into making the open world. I don't have a problem in theory with cutting stuff in order to put more time into the main quest path. The question is, what would you want to cut?
Personally, I would have been fine with one or two less "side quest maps" if that time was devoted to more main storyline quests.
Remove the Hissing Wastes and one of the forest maps (take your pick between Emerald Groves and Exalted Plains) and use those resources instead to add a couple more layers to the main quest line and I think suddenly the main storyline is closer to what it should have been.
That'd be a shame, tracking down the ruins in Hissing Wastes from the pictures was fun, not to mention the straight-from-the-Hobbit bonus at the end of the hunt. The other two zones are also quite interesting, mainly for the dalish fans I'd guess but also add background to the main plot.Remove the Hissing Wastes and one of the forest maps (take your pick between Emerald Groves and Exalted Plains) and use those resources instead to add a couple more layers to the main quest line and I think suddenly the main storyline is closer to what it should have been.
Well for those of us who have yet to get the game and are just reading up on things, we would not know that Corypheus is in the game
bummer ya, I was freaked to discover this plot, but there is more so don't worry
Pretty much and if you do the side content you feel SO DISCONNECTED to your character, the main story and the party members that you even start feeling like you are playing something else.
I can't stand the Dalish but found the exalted plains quite interesting. I love exploring old ruins when they're not in a cave (looking at you, Skyrim).That'd be a shame, tracking down the ruins in Hissing Wastes from the pictures was fun, not to mention the straight-from-the-Hobbit bonus at the end of the hunt. The other two zones are also quite interesting, mainly for the dalish fans I'd guess but also add background to the main plot.
Right.
I think Storm Coast has more interesting caves. It has that going for it. And there seemed to be less need to jump up cliffs to get places.
What I've liked is that they've separated story from grind. In DA:O (which I loved) you had to grind your way through an area (Dark Roads, Fade, Brecilian Forest) to get to the next bit of the story. In DAI you still have some grind to get to a level to do the next story without dying, but you can choose the grind you want. Closing rifts, exploring Emerald Graves, killing Dragons. None are compulsory. It's actually quite clever.
The biggest issue with this whole situation is - the length of the game really depends on how you play the game. If you focus mainly on the main story then the game will seem/be short, whereas if you just go an do area's, side-quest's, etc it can be a long, long game.
I can understand the frustration of the OP regarding what they felt of the length of the game, and how issue's & such panned out. If you pushed through then the mage/templar conflict can be declared 'over' quite quickly. I also agree about the issue with the items for specializations - I had to look them up out-of-the-game on what was required. These should be explained better in-game on how to get them... but they are not.
Regarding game time - as I said, it depends on how you play it. Take me for instance - I'm doing all area's, side-quest's, etc. So I'm doing what people would call a 'completionist' run... but it's the way I play. I'm up to ~70 hours in-game and prolly halfway through the main story I think Not saying my way is right for everyone... it is right for me.
However I can see how if you focused mainly on main missions (and maybe main companion side-quest's) that the game would be over fairly soon - there needs to be more balance done to the way main/side quest's are done. IMO DAI is weighted more on side than main, they need some more weight in main quest's imo... and less on side-quest's (which many ppl consider to be just 'filler' stuff). Just my opinion.
The problem with running around and doing everything is that it's...well...rather boring. The only side mission stuff that was at all interesting was the lake in Crestwood and the Temple in Forbidden Oasis. They lost so many opperturnities to do interesting things in this game. The civil war combined with the Dalish in Exalted Plains for one. I am actually having trouble getting through my first playthrough from trying to do so much of the side missions.
They finally manage to pull off what Dragon Age 1 was advertized as (spiritual successsor to BG1 & 2) due to tech finally being at the level they wanted it to be, and people complain... sigh. We are finally done with the moronic alley runs that every rpg has been since Neverwinter, and people want more narrow one-way streets? Really boggles the mind.
I for one am infinitely happy that we finally get a more open rpg instead of these borefests where you follow a tiny corridor for 60 fuckng hours. In fact, I feel like they finally, after all these years, managed to surpass BG 2 if they deliver quality DLC for the game. If you visit the Haven graveyard in DA:O you'll find that the game has everything they wish they could have put into that game, but couldn't due to consoles being worthless pieces of junk.
During development Bioware rapresentatives said that every area was going to have a self-contained story. Now that I'm playing I'm finding that it is true formally... but not in practice. Pretty much all area related stories boil down to some piece of dialogue with no cutscene and some codex entries you can find while exploring. It's not what I expected from a Bioware RPG.
Seriously? Hinterlands HAS a story (more than one, actually, with a couple also tied to future events as for example Valammar). Crestwood HAS a story. Exalted Plains HAS a story. Emprise Du Lion HAS a story. Fallow Mire HAS a story. Emerald Grave HAS a story and so on and so forth. All the zones have a self contained story in themselves (some of them even spanning multiple arcs, in fact).
Sincerely people should stop posting blatant lies. Don't you maybe like how those stories are addressed and/or approached? Fine, but please stop insisting that what the devs said was not correct because this is obviously not the case.
Practically all the areas (apart very minor hubs that open beside the side quest arcs) in the game have a self-contained story that is anticipated a little when you reach it in the beginning and then it expands by and by when you are there. Some areas (as Crestwood) even change dramatically when the main story is finished. Some other areas even have side stories that expand in the war table somewhere else (as for example The Western Approach).
One can insist many things but surely not that the various zones don't contain in themselves self-contained stories. Either you like them or not, either how they are approached you find "cheap" or whatever, this truth doesn't change.
Seriously? Hinterlands HAS a story (more than one, actually). Crestwood HAS a story. Exalted Plains HAS a story. Emprise Du Lion HAS a story. Fallow Mire HAS a story. Emerald Grave HAS a story and so on and so forth. All the zones have a self contained story.
Sincerely people should stop posting blatant lies. Don't you maybe like how those stories are addressed and/or approached? Fine, but please stop insisting that what the devs said was not correct because this is obviously not the case.
Practically all the areas in the game have a self-contained story that is anticipated a little when you come there in the beginning and then it expands by and by when you are there. Some areas (as Crestwood) even change dramatically when the main story is finished. Some other areas even have side stories that expand in the war table somewhere else (as for example The Western Approach).
One can insist many things but surely not that the various zones don't contain in themselves self-contained stories. Either you like them or not, either how they are approached you find "cheap" or whatever, this truth doesn't change.
What I've liked is that they've separated story from grind. In DA:O (which I loved) you had to grind your way through an area (Dark Roads, Fade, Brecilian Forest) to get to the next bit of the story. In DAI you still have some grind to get to a level to do the next story without dying, but you can choose the grind you want. Closing rifts, exploring Emerald Graves, killing Dragons. None are compulsory. It's actually quite clever.
Up to a point yes, but then you think shall I just get the game over or should I keep pretending I'm immersed in hours and hours of pointless gameplay? I actually appreciate Bioware's decision to try this method, I really do, but does it really work? You explore everything for 30 hours until the novelty wears off, then you suddenly realise you just want to get on with the story, and then it feels short and anti-climatic.
Retour en haut