348 réponses à ce sujet

[Riddam]

Somewhat similar, I've made 3 saves. A human sword and shield warrior, human mage, qunari 2 handed warrior, and recorded some 80 hours or so in the game. At most around 7 hours of it has been story related, the completionist in me finds it very hard to leave areas unfinished, as such I've had immense difficulty in keeping to it, until finally a week ago I just stopped, the game feels more like a job than fun, and I deemed it not worth spending my free time on something that makes me feel so drained without seemingly any payback. Got as far as replacing the empress with that elf, and helping loghain and hawke against the grey wardens in the desert map with my mage and as far as unlocking reaver on my qunari. Incidentally, I never completed DA2 either.

[Kalas Magnus]

my expectations for a biower game dropped after the last two games. so that helps.

[Natureguy85]

Perhaps I missed your sterling review; good thing as my opinion is so much different then yours. Quite enjoyed the tale in ME3, including both sets of conclusions.

 

I could give you one, but it sounds like the plot holes and nonsense didn't bother you. What do you mean by both sets of conclusions? Before and after Extended cut?

 

If only, I remember fighting Cerberus more often than the Reapers!

 

True, and this is one of my major complaints, but the Reapers were at least an active force. In ME2, the fight was against the Collectors and we were simply told they were related to Reapers.

 

 

 Where is the famous "bioware storytelling"?

 

 That is NOT the patented Bioware Storytelling I was looking for.

 

How long will people still give Bioware this blanket credit for story telling? Despite whatever you think about their past, the plots of ME2, DA2, and ME3 were terrible and this is their recent history.

[Elhanan]

I could give you one, but it sounds like the plot holes and nonsense didn't bother you. What do you mean by both sets of conclusions? Before and after Extended cut? 
 
True, and this is one of my major complaints, but the Reapers were at least an active force. In ME2, the fight was against the Collectors and we were simply told they were related to Reapers. 
 
How long will people still give Bioware this blanket credit for story telling? Despite whatever you think about their past, the plots of ME2, DA2, and ME3 were terrible and this is their recent history.

Yes; before and after. And I enjoy the notion that Cerebus, Reapers, and the Geth were all encountered in the final game. The DLC was also terrific; Citadel being my favorite.

No blanket needed; Bioware earns there spot as storytellers easily.

[D3uZ]

+1 Is way to much "Dark Souls" in this game, and very little Dragon Age compare to dao and da2, you can't even be a healer anymore, i used to be healer in both two first games. Was very unhappy with Inquisition.. I really don't get it why they wanted the game to be another "Dark Souls", it's a huge failure! hate if you like but this is my honest opinion.

 

As well Hetrosexual romance options sucked as well, both Cassandra and Josephine are really ugly. Mean Cassandra act's like a man to me with scars and that super short ugly hair :S however in dragon age 2 Cassandra looked A LOT better! if she looked more like that in Inquisition i could have overlooked her "manly ways". And Josephine looks like a super old house wife, nothing special at all..

So romance options in Origins + Dragon Age 2 was a billion times better! so this drag the game down for me as well..

 

But hey this is just my opinion.

[sim-ran]

Can an admin please move this thread to the spoiler section? The amount of plot spoiler in it is shocking.

[Phentos]

For me, it was a quest breaking bug during In Your Heart Shall Burn that completely killed any real motivation to play the campaign any more, or again with a new character.

 

That combined with broken loot and constant connection problems in Multiplayer...

 

Yea I haven't played DA:I at all for nearly a month now.

 

That feel when you never get to see Skyhold because of bugs and frustration.

[Natureguy85]

Yes; before and after. And I enjoy the notion that Cerebus, Reapers, and the Geth were all encountered in the final game. The DLC was also terrific; Citadel being my favorite.

No blanket needed; Bioware earns there spot as storytellers easily.

 

Yeah that's fine, but that's not really a defense of the story or writing. Cerberus shouldn't have been the primary antagonist. The crucible was silly. Throwing away the Geth dreadnaught made no sense. Legion's strange behavior wasn't explored like it should be and then he had a nonsensical death. The Catalyst was terrible. The central conflict was changed and a sub-theme was turned into the great conflict of existence. The endings had fun things such as teleporting squadmates and the "fix" was a poorly placed but otherwise well done evac scene. War assets were meaningless. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

 

There were some good things there, but no, Bioware of late doesn't deserve any credit for story telling. ME2, DA2, and ME3 all had bad main plots. The characters of ME were well done, however, and DA2 had good character interaction, even though the characters were weak individually.

[Rahelron]

How long will people still give Bioware this blanket credit for story telling? Despite whatever you think about their past, the plots of ME2, DA2, and ME3 were terrible and this is their recent history.

 

You are right to a point: I agree with you on the fact that DA2 and ME3 stories were not satisfying at all and even stripped the player of its agency, forcing him into following a predetermined plot and refusing to acknowledge the choices he made before the ending.

 

But in those games storytelling was there and was important. Proceeding through the story took more or less 60% of the time you spent playing them. Perhaps they were even too much story heavy: in those games cutscenes interrupted the action all the time, levels were limited and there was almost no exploration.

 

In DAI experiencing the story has taken me perhaps 10% of the time I've spent playing the game so far. The rest has been all grind. Grind to collect the power I needed to unlock new areas, grind to level up my character so he was capable of accessing those areas without dying, grind to complete companion related quests hoping to witness some meaningful story moment (and I was always disappointed).

 

That's why I'm asking where is Bioware's storytelling: perhaps quality storytelling has gone away for some time right now, but in DAI I see no storytelling at all for most of the game.

[Alpr]

I finally stopped playing last week. There are numerous issues with ps3 version and only played so long because of dupe glitch else I would have stopped long ago because searching for ores, leather, and herbs on every playthrough got old very, very fast.

[ThreeF]

In DAI experiencing the story has taken me perhaps 10% of the time I've spent playing the game so far. The rest has been all grind. Grind to collect the power I needed to unlock new areas, grind to level up my character so he was capable of accessing those areas without dying, grind to complete companion related quests hoping to witness some meaningful story moment (and I was always disappointed)

 

The story itself is not anything award winning, it never was, but I think the characters are well written here. From what I read in here and from my own experience it vastly depends on how you pace yourself and what it is that you want to get from the game. When I tried to grint or to stay focused on some objective, it got boring super fast, when I started to play less focused and basically started to enjoy the interaction and exploring the world and the characters it became a completely different game.

 

It's not a linear game, you don't have to be a race horse that wears blinkers.

[Elhanan]

Yeah that's fine, but that's not really a defense of the story or writing. Cerberus shouldn't have been the primary antagonist. The crucible was silly. Throwing away the Geth dreadnaught made no sense. Legion's strange behavior wasn't explored like it should be and then he had a nonsensical death. The Catalyst was terrible. The central conflict was changed and a sub-theme was turned into the great conflict of existence. The endings had fun things such as teleporting squadmates and the "fix" was a poorly placed but otherwise well done evac scene. War assets were meaningless. This is only the tip of the iceberg.
 
There were some good things there, but no, Bioware of late doesn't deserve any credit for story telling. ME2, DA2, and ME3 all had bad main plots. The characters of ME were well done, however, and DA2 had good character interaction, even though the characters were weak individually.

Sorry, but your opinion varies greatly from my own. What you deem silly, nonsensical, and irrelevant was quite well done for me. Cerebus was introduced in ME, brought to the forefront of ME2, then remained as a major influence of ME 3. This also worked well for Moriarity and his syndicate in the tales of Sherlock Holmes.

Having past civilizations gradually craft something over the spans of their various cultures as a joint way to fight the Reapers was inspired; the notion that they were greater as a whole than as a single culture is still stratedy that is utilized today. Etc.

I quite enjoyed the iceberg, and missed colliding with it and enjoyed the cruise; guess some did not. Blame the pilot; not the ship.

[Natureguy85]

Sorry, but your opinion varies greatly from my own. What you deem silly, nonsensical, and irrelevant was quite well done for me. Cerebus was introduced in ME, brought to the forefront of ME2, then remained as a major influence of ME 3. This also worked well for Moriarity and his syndicate in the tales of Sherlock Holmes.

Having past civilizations gradually craft something over the spans of their various cultures as a joint way to fight the Reapers was inspired; the notion that they were greater as a whole than as a single culture is still stratedy that is utilized today. Etc.

I quite enjoyed the iceberg, and missed colliding with it and enjoyed the cruise; guess some did not. Blame the pilot; not the ship.

 

Yeah introduced in ME as an Alliance splinter group, changed into an independent shadow organization that everybody knows about and plasters its logo everywhere, then exploded into a massive military organization. Including them was fine, but making them the primary antagonist was not.

 

That part of the crucible is interesting, but it's ability to survive across cycles is questionable when the Reapers do so much to wipe away the previous cycles. That said, the first game contradicts itself a bit with Vigil telling us technology was taken or destroyed, yet plenty of Protean ruins being discovered by the current cycle. More concretely, its discovery "just in time" and no need on Shepard's part to actually do anything with it was lame. Even the Catalyst belittles it as "little more than a power source". So much more could have been done with it.

 

"Strength through diversity" was indeed one of the primary themes of the game, but it was thrown out and was what made the Synthesis ending so offensive. The conversation with Javik about it compared to his homogenous Prothean culture was one of the biggest proofs of his necessity and why making him a paid DLC was a colossal mistake.

[Elhanan]

Yeah introduced in ME as an Alliance splinter group, changed into an independent shadow organization that everybody knows about and plasters its logo everywhere, then exploded into a massive military organization. Including them was fine, but making them the primary antagonist was not.
 
That part of the crucible is interesting, but it's ability to survive across cycles is questionable when the Reapers do so much to wipe away the previous cycles. That said, the first game contradicts itself a bit with Vigil telling us technology was taken or destroyed, yet plenty of Protean ruins being discovered by the current cycle. More concretely, its discovery "just in time" and no need on Shepard's part to actually do anything with it was lame. Even the Catalyst belittles it as "little more than a power source". So much more could have been done with it.
 
"Strength through diversity" was indeed one of the primary themes of the game, but it was thrown out and was what made the Synthesis ending so offensive. The conversation with Javik about it compared to his homogenous Prothean culture was one of the biggest proofs of his necessity and why making him a paid DLC was a colossal mistake.

Again, your opinion nor mine makes it so. I quite like the story of Cerebus, and how we gradually view them thru the course of all the games in that series. I also am enjoying DAI, and do not requite DLC to explain it.

[sim-ran]

Again, your opinion nor mine makes it so. I quite like the story of Cerebus, and how we gradually view them thru the course of all the games in that series. I also am enjoying DAI, and do not requite DLC to explain it.

Well it's good that you enjoy it, but this is a case where I think the story arc could probably be demonstrated to be objectively bad. (there are some rules to good storytelling after all).

You can say you enjoy it but I don't think you can justify it as good. In fact I'd hope you were able to tell the difference between enjoyment and quality. I enjoyed the crap out of axed Aremican soap opera Sunset Beach but I still knew it was trash!

[Elhanan]

Well it's good that you enjoy it, but this is a case where I think the story arc could probably be demonstrated to be objectively bad. (there are some rules to good storytelling after all).

You can say you enjoy it but I don't think you can justify it as good. In fact I'd hope you were able to tell the difference between enjoyment and quality. I enjoyed the crap out of axed Aremican soap opera Sunset Beach but I still knew it was trash!

Not a Lit major, and rather dislike the pseudo-intellectual debates that can often appear on writing threads, so I pass on offering criticism or an apologetic defense on proper writing.

What I can do is offer my opinion on one that has played the games. In the case of Cerebus and ME, I quite like the way a minor quest builds momentum and meaning through other side-quests to become a rather significant role in the first game. Then in ME2, the mind behind the organization becomes a dominant force that drives Shepard towards a conclusion for good or ill. Then in ME3, the Illusive Man is shown to be one of the major obstacles against humanity, as well as the Reapers themselves.

From what I recall, the Reapers themselves had less face time in the original game, so now there are two adversaries with minor attention that have become major threats in the later games. And in the same way, Prothean tech, knowledge, etc is also slowly revealed across the series; no reason for me to think that the Crucible simply appears from nowhere as I accept the explanations given.

Others may wish to speak of protagonists, themes, plot devices, etc, but am simply not up for that myself.

[Spirited Treasure]

I am taking a break. In Skyrim.

[Salaya]

Well it's good that you enjoy it, but this is a case where I think the story arc could probably be demonstrated to be objectively bad. (there are some rules to good storytelling after all).

 

There isn't any single rule to that. If there is anything at all in literature that proves something is that the existence of an "objeticve" rule for "good" and "bad" litrature is nonexistant.

 

The "good" and "bad" elements that form a good narration during history are mutually exclussive, contradictory or just irrational, but they exist nonetheless. And that is because fiction, or better said, written fiction, does not have any single rule that proves its value. Stating the contrary is being irrational or just allienated from reality.

 

Maybe you could like (or not) a plot. But trying to make that as an objeticve rule is ridiculous.

[Nimlowyn]

There isn't any single rule to that. If there is anything at all in literature that proves something is that the existence of an "objeticve" rule for "good" and "bad" litrature is nonexistant.
 
The "good" and "bad" elements that form a good narration during history are mutually exclussive, contradictory or just irrational, but they exist nonetheless. And that is because fiction, or better said, written fiction, does not have any single rule that proves its value. Stating the contrary is being irrational or just allienated from reality.
 
Maybe you could like (or not) a plot. But trying to make that as an objeticve rule is ridiculous.

Having spent ten years of my life studying English language, literature and cultural anthropology (almost done!) I agree wholeheartedly.

[Akka le Vil]

There isn't any single rule to that. If there is anything at all in literature that proves something is that the existence of an "objeticve" rule for "good" and "bad" litrature is nonexistant.

 

There is maybe not a hard and fast mechanical objective rule to calculate the "value point" of a product, but it certainly doesn't mean that all creation is equal and that it's all subjective.

[keyip]

In fact I'd hope you were able to tell the difference between enjoyment and quality. I enjoyed the crap out of axed Aremican soap opera Sunset Beach but I still knew it was trash!

 

Allow me to talk about quality very briefly. In the book world there is literature for the serious thinkers, and genre fiction for those lowly individuals who seek pure entertainment. Do you want to know why developers will generally push for entertainment over a "quality story?"

 

In the literature world, if an author moves 7,000 hardcover copies that author is a star. 7,000 is all it takes because literature sells SFA. If you sell over 4,000 you're a solid seller. 

 

Genre fiction, on the other hand, sells bucketloads despite being traditionally looked down upon as trashy in the book world. Romance novels are especially looked down upon and yet they sell the most of all.

 

The market drives the way businesses head, and the evidence suggests audiences want to be entertained more than they want a "quality storyline." 

 

Bioware sought to provide an entertaining heroic fantasy story and they have succeeded in spades. Whether the story is "quality" or not, well I don't think they really care. 

[sim-ran]

Having spent ten years of my life studying English language, literature and cultural anthropology (almost done!) I agree wholeheartedly.

Okay maybe I should've been specific. The fact that Cerberus end up getting more focus than the Reapers irks me no end, but that IS subjective.

The transformation of Cerberus from ME1 to ME2 and again in ME3 does not make sense. That is objective. The guy I was responding to saw a symbolism in these evolutions, which is kind of cool but also I would say not an objectively equal assessment. Why? Because the storytelling technique of the franchise (up until the last scene at least) is not one of arthouse symbolism. This is a sci-fi franchise that put a lot work into making a "realistic" futuristic world, with endless codexes explaining how all this tech/cultures/organisations worked. And in its own framework the Cerberus "story" just plain didn't make sense.

What Cerberus were in ME2 was a retcon of what they were in ME1. And for them to have become what they were in ME3 given how short a time there was between 2 and 3 is just so absurdly farfetched. And the only explanation was usually just a handwavey "they have Reaper tech". Half of the things they did in the game didn't make sense either, and were never even given an objective.

If nothing else I'm sure you english lit folks can at least agree that a retcon can objectively be called a poor storytelling technique.

But anyway, we've digressed too far, this is the DAI forum not the ME3 forum!

[Heathen Oxman]

Allow me to talk about quality very briefly. In the book world there is literature for the serious thinkers, and genre fiction for those lowly individuals who seek pure entertainment. Do you want to know why developers will generally push for entertainment over a "quality story?"

 

In the literature world, if an author moves 7,000 hardcover copies that author is a star. 7,000 is all it takes because literature sells SFA. If you sell over 4,000 you're a solid seller. 

 

Genre fiction, on the other hand, sells bucketloads despite being traditionally looked down upon as trashy in the book world. Romance novels are especially looked down upon and yet they sell the most of all.

 

The market drives the way businesses head, and the evidence suggests audiences want to be entertained more than they want a "quality storyline." 

 

Bioware sought to provide an entertaining heroic fantasy story and they have succeeded in spades. Whether the story is "quality" or not, well I don't think they really care. 

 

 

There's plenty of "genre fiction" that can apply to "serious thinkers," and plenty that can deliver "quality stories."

 

I've read lots of genre fiction, and "literature," and I've discovered that a "quality story" isn't made less-so because it takes place on a Martian colony as opposed to an 18th century English farmhouse.

[Amaror]

Couldn't aggree more. I mean it took me about 48 hours to get to this point, but i just don't want to play anymore. I normally complete everything i play and constantly have this voice in my head telling me to continue playing it. Then i hover over the icon, remember the boring combat and just can't get myself to suffer through that.

My main complaint is the combat, besides all those other things that are just bad in this game, it's just not fun. It's boring and repetitive and not fun. 

Bioware continues their streak of making combat that simply sucks by trying to appeal to both actionfans and tacticfans. It doesn't work and ends up being simply bad.

[Elhanan]

Couldn't aggree more. I mean it took me about 48 hours to get to this point, but i just don't want to play anymore. I normally complete everything i play and constantly have this voice in my head telling me to continue playing it. Then i hover over the icon, remember the boring combat and just can't get myself to suffer through that.
My main complaint is the combat, besides all those other things that are just bad in this game, it's just not fun. It's boring and repetitive and not fun. 
Bioware continues their streak of making combat that simply sucks by trying to appeal to both actionfans and tacticfans. It doesn't work and ends up being simply bad.

So if Bioware has made 'combat that simply sucks' in the past, I question as to why one repeat it again. I quite Diablo after a single game; did not take anyone to drag me away from the sequels.

While I prefer more Active options for each Tier and more Quickslots, the combat is fine to me. I am finding more versatility with a Mage than my Rogue, so it looks like this will be my class of choice for DAI.