87 réponses à ce sujet

[Olddog56]

that's what she said.

[UniformGreyColor]

Its true. As basic as this is, I enjoy a very long main quest story line, but there is plenty of content to keep me happy and get my moneys worth out of this game.

[Rahelron]

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.

 

Exactly

[Ravenfeeder]

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.

There's value in what you say. It certainly could be done better, but I feel that the main story events could be done better as well - fewer pointless combats in Halamshiral for starters. I love exploration so I may be an outlier for whether this works or not and I'd prefer that the exploration included plenty of non-combat interaction with the inhabitants. But if they included all my preferences it would take twice the time and three times the budget to produce.

 

I've never played a flawless game and whilst DAI isn't among the top top games, I still think it's a good one. Which reminds me, what am I doing here when I have Dragons to kill?

[Vox Draco]

The problem is not game's length per-se. It's the fact that if you steer away from the main storyline you experience no story told through cinematics and loads of dialogue whatsoever.

 

Just added that to make this sentence be a bit more truthfull ..

[Decepticon Leader Sully]

< Sees tital adds obligatory " thats what she said." post. 

[Rahelron]

Just added that to make this sentence be a bit more truthfull ..

 

Yeah, I'll admit that game developers are making a big deal of environmental storytelling nowadays.

 

Let me say that if I see a corpse lying around with an object nearby that SHOULD explain his death I personally don't get excited. Things like those are good to establish a mysterious story that the player has to unveil, but if they become the main device you use to deliver some plot in an otherwise barren environment then let me say it's not enough.

[NM_Che56]

This is the sort of comment I would expect from someone who hasn't left the Hinterlands.  Because what you're describing is true... of the Hinterlands.

Pretty damn much.  I put the side quests in the same line as Skyrim.  I think they're fun and worth doing.

[Shadesofsiknas]

Im curious as to how I got here?

[mmu1]

I actually enjoy the game more the deeper I get into it - the zones are a mixed bag, but I think the content is deeper / more interesting in the second half of the game.

 

IMO the implementation of the open-world portion of the game does suffer from a few problems that seem like they'd have been relatively easy to fix and make me wonder about their design priorities:

 

1. There is too much disconnect between the main quest and the open world - I think the game would have benefited immensely if the various story missions more often required you to go into the open world areas to find something / someone / some piece of information to connect the main quest missions. Crestwood is a great example of this being done well, I wish they'd done it more.

 

2. The game does a poor job, especially early on, of leading you to the more interesting content / hurrying you through enough of the main quest that options open up a bit.

 

3. While I think many of the zones do a fine job of telling the story through the handful of NPCs you get to interact with and the various notes (makes me wonder if a lot of people don't even bother reading them), I don't think it would have broken their budget if every area included a couple more NPCs you could have a short conversation with as part of the area quests, or if more of the "boss" enemies had a couple of lines of dialogue before you get to the killing.

 

Anyway, my rating of the game zones so far would be something like this:

 

Hinterlands: 2/5 (not an awful zone, but not a good start to the game, too much stuff happening in a vacuum)

 

Storm Coast: 2/5 (just too damn barren, hardly anything to do)

 

The Fallow Mire: 3/5 (not a ton to do, but has a decent amount of content for a small zone and very little filler)

 

Crestwood: 5/5 (awesome integration of main quest, side quests and exploration, get a feeling this is what they wanted all the open world zones to be like - lots of story and reactivity, but didn't have the time / resources)

 

Exalted Plains: 2/5 (starts off fairly strong, but the side quest there ends so abruptly it feels unfinished)

 

Western Approach: 4/5 (like most of the areas with a keep in it, it has more NPCs and a couple of decent side quests to follow as you explore, and it at least feels like you're affecting the world a bit)

 

The Emerald Graves: 3/5 (good, but a lot of neat stuff to explore doesn't quite make up for a weaker side quest, too many hp-sink enemies)

 

Emprise du Lion: 4/5 (a solid side quest well integrated into the overall story, love the landscape)

 

The Hissing Wastes: 4/5 (still in progress, but I for one love being able to play archeologist, the sense of scale is awesome)

 

Also, plenty of the companion quests (the real ones, no the "collect/kill X of Y" ones which are only there to make sure everyone can get enough approval to trigger the companion interactions if what you've gotten just playing through the story and conversations is not enough) are interesting and provide a good break from the open-world exploration when you want it.

 

Overall, I think the game has a lot of strong content and it's a pity Bioware didn't do a better job of making the main quest a sort of guided tour of all the best parts of the open world.

[In Exile]

I think the Hinterlands would have benefited the most from more dialogue. There's a great story to tell there that ties in with the mage templar war and all the moving parts are there's - even how opportunistic third parties are profiting. But then there's none of it you can really interact with beside reading the codex entries.

[shinrahunter]

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.

If I want to read a story I go grab a book. I'm playing a game I want to play the story.
Dragon Age is the only game of this kind where I read all the codex entries but I do not expect "areas with their own stories" to be telling them this way.
That's no different from reading up on Orzammar in DA:O

Along those lines the only area they got right was Crestwood. That felt like a DA area. An interested plot line that lead places. *pat on the back for whoever came up with that area's story.
The rest were drivel;

Hissing wastes - trek around a barron environment looking for ruins (tiny ruins at that)
Western approach - there's a dragon to lure out (what's so different from the other 9 dragons?)

Hinterlands - remember that mage templar war they talked about? well this is it, it's a fight in this one area that lasts about 30 mins until you make a choice and then boom, it's over.

Desert Temple place - Collect all the shards around the world to open all the doors and get LOOOOT, which sucks in comparison to everything else you have.

Just for the record, I'm on my 2nd run now and need to obtain 50 power to do the next two story missions, what a ****** joke!
I now have to go do mindless side missions just so I can get on with the story. What's power even for? I have like 200 on my completed game save of my first run through.

Oh and as for telling the story by our own actions, nothing we really do seems to have any effect. This is on a very different world state than my first and nobody important to the story acts any differently (trying to avoid spoilers but those who know whill know) and things like obtaining "horses for the inquisition" don't make an iota of difference to anything except that you get a badly animated horse for yourself that can phase right through landscape.

[UniformGreyColor]

Western Approach is my favorite area so far...

[shinrahunter]

Seriously?
I'm playing on ps3 so maybe there's a lot missing visually/atmospherically but it's just a barron landscape with nothing in it.
What do you like about it?

[dlux]

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.

The combat is bad. Real bad. You just hold right trigger (or the R key on PC) for 10 minutes while occasionaly moving characters to kill a dragon...
 

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.

Yep, this.

[kaidanluv]

 

I think too much effort went into being "skyrim" and failing at it. Bioware should treat DA as their OWN game and direction, not trying to emulate Skyrim. DA's strength lies in the story.

I agree with many of the points you've posted in this thread, but this is probably my biggest issue with DA:I in a nutshell - and it's exactly why I was unhappy when I found out the game was going to be open world. I was like, Oh no, here we go again...everyone wants to be Skyrim, when all I really, really want out of a Bioware game is their true and tried story and characters formula (which I believe we got to an extent, but it was almost overtaken by all these meaningless exploration side-quest things you have to do to get there).

 

If I wanted more Skyrim, I'd go play it. Loved the crap out of that game, too, but I appreciate differences in the RPG genre. Not a bunch of similarly played titles. I'm upset Witcher has decided to go that route, too, but here's hoping it'll be handled better.

[DariusDrannen]

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.

 

Except the difference is BG1 and BG2's main quests were epic, both in length and in depth.  DAI's "sidequests" brought back memories of the old IE games, but the main quest was dreadfully short in comparison.

 

I, personally, find that a bigger fault than the different maps having disconnected, personal stories of their own.  If the main quest in DAI was the same length of the BGs, I wouldn't have a problem with it.  Instead, it seems like the main quest suffered in favor of the side quests.

[Imryll]

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

Well, just walking around the Hinterlands without having chosen a side in the initial conflict, I've had party members strangely refer to "bandits" we've encountered as Corypheus's men. Uh, Corypheus? It seems to me that if Bioware is going to allow companions include spoilers in their banter, they should at least give the PC an opportunity to ask, "Who?"

[shinrahunter]

Well, just walking around the Hinterlands without having chosen a side in the initial conflict, I've had party members strangely refer to "bandits" we've encountered as Corypheus's men. Uh, Corypheus? It seems to me that if Bioware is going to allow companions include spoilers in their banter, they should at least give the PC an opportunity to ask, "Who?"

 

lol, not had that happen yet but it doesn't surprise me with the amount of bugs in this game.

I'msure people on here think I hate it, I don't, I'm still playing solidly each day.
I'm just disappointed.

[Mornmagor]

I'll never understand why people have the urge to spoil things in the non spoiler section.

[SirGladiator]

I think if there was a way they could've improved the whole main quest/side quest thing, it would've been tying in all the areas more into the main quest.  Certainly the Hinterlands and Crestwood were both done extremely well that way, other areas not so much.  That's not to say the other areas aren't awesome in their own way, but I do wish there was more of a reason to go to certain areas, and to stay there.  Maybe like, bring back more of our favorite old characters, and have one or two of them be in each area with their own little storyline, just in that one area, so we'd have an incentive to stay there and explore it.  Of course there's always room for improvement, but it was still awesome just the way it was.

[tmp7704]

Western approach - there's a dragon to lure out (what's so different from the other 9 dragons?)

Western Approach is about the Venatori poking around post-blight area and doing their stuff, and then the darkspawn moving in if you push them out. You'll excuse if I take your "the rest were drivel" opinion with a pinch of salt, after you've demonstrated such capability of missing the obvious.

[shinrahunter]

Oooh the venatori were there.
The venatori are everywhere, there's no difference.
 

[tmp7704]

Oooh the venatori were there.
The venatori are everywhere, there's no difference.

Yeah, I know I had to chase the venatori out of the keep they occupied in every other zone, too. It's absolutely identical everywhere.

[shinrahunter]

see, told you.