368 réponses à ce sujet

[FFZero]

I just finished playing the decent I have to say I found it rather underwhelming which is a shame, I really wanted to like it. I had my worries that it was going to be similar to Omega for ME3, lots of combat not much story and in my opinion that pretty much sums up the descent. Don’t get me wrong the lore bits we do get are interesting to say the least but there are so many questions at the end it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I just hate that this DLC pretty much did bugger all to clear up any questions and just added a whole load more, and there’s no guarantee that we’re ever going to get answers to any of them. 

[Elhanan]

I just finished playing the decent I have to say I found it rather underwhelming which is a shame, I really wanted to like it. I had my worries that it was going to be similar to Omega for ME3, lots of combat not much story and in my opinion that pretty much sums up the descent. Don’t get me wrong the lore bits we do get are interesting to say the least but there are so many questions at the end it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I just hate that this DLC pretty much did bugger all to clear up any questions and just added a whole load more, and there’s no guarantee that we’re ever going to get answers to any of them.

I do not mind the questions, but had hoped that these types of Boss fights were over; much prefer the Dragons we have now.

[NessCraig]

I really liked the descent. I wanted more - but I felt that way with the original game. I always want more!

 

One small thing that has now happened twice that I don't understand. Why don't the companions react to what happened in the DLC's in Skyhold?

 

We went to fight darkspawn I didn't take Blackwall and he doesn't mention it? That seems strange. It SUCH a small complaint but I don't think it would be that much more and it would make the world feel more complete. It just needs the final bows and finishing touches on it.

[NKnight7]

I'm glad I brought Varric, he definitely has the most dialogue during the DLC. I'm also glad I brought Cassandra because she actually talked a few times too during The Descent. Overall, I didn't think the DLC was bad but I think I liked Hakkon a little more.

[Tyloric]

I finished not too long ago. I liked what it tried to accomplish, and I clocked in at about 6 hours with most (not quite all) things done. BioWare seems to have stumbled in several places as far as execution was concerned. The story is interesting but runs face first into a brick wall just as things start to get interesting, the implications of the lore it builds going completely unexplored. It feels like this is the set up for another story to be told later, which feels lazy in my opinion. I really enjoyed being in the deep roads again, they have a sense of scale that they haven't had in the previous games yet. Lack of party banter was a shame, though members do chime in in cutscenes sometimes. The new characters are interesting if under utilized.

 

I liked it, but it didn't live up to its potential.

 

And if this becomes an excuse to give dwarves magic, I'm going to be very irritated.

[Neoideo]

I have just finished it and really liked it. The best of all the DLC where the locations, the atmosphere of some of the floors when going down was indeed good. The scenario designers of the DA development team have put an awesome work from the beginning, despite all the critics the game has received, the environments have always been amazing we must accept it.

[OdanUrr]

I have just finished it and really liked it. The best of all the DLC where the locations, the atmosphere of some of the floors when going down was indeed good. The scenario designers of the DA development team have put an awesome work from the beginning, despite all the critics the game has received, the environments have always been amazing we must accept it.

*shrugs* For my part, this reminded me of DA2's version of the Deep Roads which I found to be empty and unappealing whereas DAO's version was more fun to explore. To each his own I guess.

[Star Reborn]

What the shaper became like one of those Earth Shaker Shal Brytol.

[Shelidon]

Well, I wasn’t pleased with the previous DLC but overall it was palatable: it provided a whole new area with its own quests, its own local tribe, its own requisition, its own environment and its own lore. Hell, it even provided you with its own dragon. And, if you are a “lore” kind of player, it provided you with some insight on the previous Inquisitor’s story. Though it wasn’t mind-blowing, and certainly it was a tad too expensive for all that it provided, Jaws of Hakkon wasn’t bad.

I certainly can’t say the same about The Descent.

 

 

New and old characters: how to build upcliches and not to develop what you have

Jaws of Hakkon choose to use Scout Harding. A lot. Even if it didn’t make much sense her being involved so much this time while she has never been involved in your explorations before.
It was a gift to all those Harding lovers out there, but still it made sense. Alongside, it gave much more vividness to the scholar, a character who was just one stone’s throw away from being shallow and already seen. Alongside them, we had the previousInquisitor himself, and his lover Telana: the echoes of their memories alone was enough to make their characters interesting. That is, of course, until you actually meet them. The hype is well built, even through those annoying “catch the floating memory” quests. In fact, their story and their involvement in the Blight, leading straight to the Exalted March and the current situation of elves, was much more interesting than Hakkon himself.

On the contrary, The Descent leaves all known characters on the surface (except of course for your choosen party, who will have little or no interaction anyway) and chooses to introduce two new characters who will accompany you: Shaper Valta, from Orzammar’s Shaperate and Liutenant Renn, from the infamousLegion of the Dead (voiced by no less than Metal Gear Solid’s own Snake, David Hayter). Valta is a scholar, and believes in some crazy theory about why we are there. Renn is a soldier who doesn’t believe in anything until he sees it. They have some unexplicit flirt thing going on. And that’s pretty much all there is to know about them. It will be very difficoult to love them, since you scarcely talk to them. Valta will be the one to introduce you to all the lore you will find during your cathabasis into the Deep Roads, so you will probably find her mostly annoying by the end of the game. And it’s a pity, since Jaws of Hakkon had found such a smart way of throwing lore at you without resulting in information dumping.

And what about your companions? Well, all you will get are some one-liner from your random partners. No significant interactons from Blackwall, even if you bring him down there before all that Grey Warden revelation. No significant interaction from Varric either, except some puns about Renn’s storytelling and some gloomy moral about the Deep Roads. And that certainly was disappointing, considering how clever Bioware has been in DA-2 DLCs Legacy (where you got significant addition in content if traveling with Anders and Varric).

 

 

Creatures and bosses: the all-new old darkspawn, cybernetic dwarves and other stuff

Being set in the Deep Roads, the very first enemies you will encounter are darkspawn. They are the kind of Darkspawn you already saw in DA-2 (all the characters and creatures are still going in that direction): those huge armoured genlocks, the jumping discipled, hurlock-alphas and Bethany-killing ogres. Killing one of those ogres will earn you your first achiement, Giant Slayer. Not that you have much choice. But more on that later.

Some other creatures you will meet are some sort of cybernetic dwarves, the Sha-Brytol (literally “Revered Defenders”) who drank lyrium, had their armours melted into their flesh, live under the Deep Roads and will basically beat you senseless. Fights can get very hard and this most definitely isn’t a post-eding DLC: your level will be so high that you will sweat through it and will get no Xp for it. While, again, Jaws of Hakkon is the place where you will finally be able to gain some Xp again after weeks of nothingness, The Descent most definitely isn’t. So consider yourself warned.

 

The most interesting creature in this DLC should be the Titan, but you don’t get to see one (more spoilers on that later). In spite of him, you have to take down his Guardian, a creature quite similar to that Ancient Rock Wraith you had to fight during DA-2 in order to get out of the Deep Roads, except that his IA and fight mode is a mix between Corypheus in Legacy and the Kayran in The Witcher 2. You basically have to avoid his stone tentacles and keep moving in order not to find yourself over one of his explosive glyphs when it blows up. And of course you have to be careful not to fall over the platform: you’ll be teleported on top with low health just to fall again, over and over.

New and old scenarios: The Deep Roads and what’s beneath them

As already hinted, The Descent is about entering the Deep Roads again. So the first part of your journey will take place in a scenario very similar to the “pimped” Deep Roads we saw in Dragon Age 2. And, just to be clear, I see absolutely nothing wrong with that: I liked the Deep Roads, I like what they did to the scenarios in DA-2 and I didn’t mind A Paragon of Her Kind so much. So that’s probably why I wasn’t disturbed at the news that this DLC would take place down there.

Still, the maps are a disappointing labyrinth, as if they took the Forbidden Oasis and put it underground. Therefore, don’t expect your map to be of much use. To quote Merlin, for every up there is a down, for every high there is a low: you’ll circle around like a madman (or madelf, or madwarf, depending on your own Inquisitor) before you get the hang of it.

Below the Deep Roads, the Uncharted Void awaits. We saw a glimpse of it during Origins, where Caradin kept his Anvil, and it wasn’t much different than your average Deep Road. Here it’s different, and for a very good reason since it turns out we are actully inside a Titan’s belly. And the scenario is awesome, though there’s so much humidity that we probably are in the Titan’s lower intestine (and, now that I think of it, that would make the Sha-Brytols his escherichia coli. One is only left to wonder what is his heart doing all the way down there.

 

Puzzles: the lyrium-addled mind strikes again

If the Temple of Mythal in the main game was a delight for all those puzzle-lovers out there, don’t expect anything like that in The Descent. All you get is Atari in its purest form, and one great line from the Inquisitor after solving the puzzle and unlocking a chest of equipment.

“Only a lyrium-addled mind would hide secrets behind such madness”

Words of wisdom.

 

Story and interaction with the main plot

The Inquisitor is called to investigate strange earthquakes, for no other reason aside from apparently being a friend of Orzammar. So you fight your way down, you fight your boss and then you go back up. The DLC starts as a side mission and ends up as one: no main interation is shown between those “earthquakes” and the Breach aside from some vague line on behalf of Valta, who says that apparently the Titan causing earthquakes was “disturbed by the Breach but is calm now”. No Corypheus subplot. No additional army gained for your final fight to save the world. No Skyhold content. The DLC actually encourages you not to go back to Skyhold: it provides you with your camp, your local wartable with local operations, your merchant, your weapon-making and weapon-enhancing machinery. You won’t even get to talk about it with Dagna, when you get back to Skyhold.

 

Achievements

There’s four of them: 3 of them are strictly related to the story, while the fourth one is optional and is gained through completing one operation on a special version of the War Table that gets installed in your main camp as soon as you get down to the Deep Roads. As in the main game, I have the feeling these achievements totally lack of imagination. You don’t get achievements for doing crazy stuff, the only challenge they present is boredome (see the infamous “Botanist” achiement that I still don’t have). They merely mark your progression through the story and rarely they record a specific choice you made (“On Burning Wings”). What happened to jewels like “Deep Roads Safari” or “That Thing Has Legs”? Why can’t we have fun achievements anymore? Achievements that are both fun to readand to play, possibly? Pretty please?

As a matter of fact, the “pretty please” applies to everything. This is certainly the kind of DLC that doesn’t make sense in Inquisition, where everything should be built upon on a sense of urgency, of doom upon the world. Hawke could have a Deep Roads Safari, if she wanted. The Inquisitor certainly shouldn’t. Not while there’s Corypheus to fight. And certainly not while there’s still a Dread Wolf to hunt. And one is left to wonder if we are ever going to get some post-ending content after all.

[Vicious]

 

 No significant interactons from Blackwall, even if you bring him down there before all that Grey Warden revelation. 

 

 

 

 

Look, we've all beaten this game a few months removed from its 1yr anniversary right??  What revelation is he going to give since he's not a Grey Warden and probably never went into the deep roads before?

 

 

 

Anyway side note, the music was excellent.

 

[StrangerPasingBy]

Sandal being tied to this would be a cool thing to put for the next DA game considering he did prophesied the upcoming DAI and has mysteriously survived being surrounded by darkspawn twice. I'm still hoping I get to use the hero of ferelden again for the next DA game.

[Shelidon]

Look, we've all beaten this game a few months removed from its 1yr anniversary right??  What revelation is he going to give since he's not a Grey Warden and probably never went into the deep roads before?

 

I didn't expect any revelation, of course, but some basic interaction? Possibly different interactions if you know he's not a Grey Warden or if you still don't know it? Anything. What bothers me is that you get no feedback at all: it is as if you are alone down there. You can't talk with anybody about anything.

[Elhanan]

I didn't expect any revelation, of course, but some basic interaction? Possibly different interactions if you know he's not a Grey Warden or if you still don't know it? Anything. What bothers me is that you get no feedback at all: it is as if you are alone down there. You can't talk with anybody about anything.

I had some input from Cassandra, Vivienne, and Dorian, as well as Varric for the time he was still there.

[atum]

Look, we've all beaten this game a few months removed from its 1yr anniversary right??  What revelation is he going to give since he's not a Grey Warden and probably never went into the deep roads before?

 

 

 

Anyway side note, the music was excellent.

 

 

Gotta admit, the music was pretty awesome.  It was oddly Mass Effect-y, but still awesome.

[TeffexPope]

I find myself unable to advance. I'm at the part where Renn burns the bodies but there's no interaction available. I've tried a number of things, leaving the area, hell even going to the spot with no party members, but I can't interact with them. And if you don't burn them, the big door on the next level doesn't open. Which is probably the first problem...making that mandatory to advance is stupid, even without this issue. The only odd thing I noticed, when I initially got there and fought the darkspawn, was there appeared to be an enemy stuck somewhere in the terrain. I saw a red dot on the radar, and everybody was in battle mode so I couldn't initiate the corpse burning, but I also couldn't engage the last enemy. Then when I left the deep roads and came back later, I still couldn't interact with the corpses. Anyone else run into this? Nothing I do works to fix it. And it's too late load an earlier save...

[Elhanan]

The enemy is still around. It needs to respawn in an area it can be reached and killed.

There is one in my game that likes to hide near the next lift; kill it and return to see if that works. Also could try Quicksave and reload.

[henchmannumber21]

Anybody have any thoughts as to why the name of the Descent in the update folder is "SinglePlayer_DLCRed"?

I find it especially curious considering there was a lot of lyrium but no red lyrium.

 

Hakkon folder is just called "SinglePlayer_DLC1" so no insight there