The fact that is is lore breaking as hell is perfectly ok, right? As long as it is "awesome".
Cannot break the lore as the weapon is new to the series. While Surfacers have not seen such before, these Dwarves and their arms & armor are apparently discovered here for the first time. Again, I have not seen the weapon, but I do support their use of lyrium projectiles.
I other words you would love it if the Qunari suddenly have spaceships in the next game. It would be something new, after all. Doesn't need to make sense.
Where were these guys during the blight? Completely ignoring it? And nothing mentioned about those guys in the huge library in Orzammar?
What's next? A "summon dwarven death star spell"? Its adds an option, right? No need to explain where it comes from.
I other words you would love it if the Qunari suddenly have spaceships in the next game. It would be something new, after all. Doesn't need to make sense.
Where were these guys during the blight? Completely ignoring it? And nothing mentioned about those guys in the huge library in Orzammar?
What's next? A "summon dwarven death star spell"? Its adds an option, right? No need to explain where it comes from.
The Qunari we have met do not have spaceships; have no idea what other Qunari might utilize. And these new Dwarves appear to drink the lyrium from the unground sea; bit of a dietary problem going topside.
Also, the Inquisition built the lifts used in the story; not the new Dwarves. Remember: They do not have airships; your new Qunari do....
So if the Qunari have spaceships in the next DA game, would you approve?
So if the Qunari have spaceships in the next DA game, would you approve?
The fact that is is lore breaking as hell is perfectly ok, right? As long as it is "awesome".
It's not lore-breaking I think. Mood-breaking, perhaps, but we already had 19th century clocks and dress uniforms in the base game. It was inevitable somebody at Bio said 'hey, they had machine guns in the 19th century, didn't they? So why don't we?'
'Whatever happens, we have got
the Maxim lyrium gun, and they have not'
You don't get it, the Lyrium Bolter is the weapon that Paragon Fairel designed to fight against the Darkspawn, and seeing dwarves use it against one another drove him to exile on the surface. Meanwhile, the Carta got their hands on a text describing the weapon, they made prototypes, one of them was reengineered by a Smith Caste Dwarf, and the result is Bianca.
There, I just wrote the Lore for you.
As bloody stupid as those semi-automatic burst fire crossbows are, I don't understand why the inquisitor didn't collect a few.
Equip the army with them and the Inquisition could take over Thedas, end the Qunari threat, do whatever the hell they wanted.
I like how people have mentioned the 'guns', I am fully expecting that someday Thedas will have guns of the 'black powder variety' but Gatling guns that shoot lyrium...?This is not Mass Effect. lol Also, there was very little party interaction, no added romance banter (that I know of). The classicist in me likes the idea of the Titans. David Hayter saves the DLC, I'd give it a 7.5 for having Solid Snake 
and some cool new weapons (especially that badass shield),also the darkspawn brought back memories, and I thought the expedition table was a good idea (it's interesting, I had a conversation about having an expedition table out in the field with somebody in the feedback section in a thread I made concerning an expansion idea lol) .
FIX THE FINAL BOSS FIGHT!!!
After 5 attempts and having all my characters one shotted I gave up trying.
It made no sense. I was at level 27, played through the entire thing without leveling up which is crap, but made it through doing all the side content, only to face a boss that is one shotting my entire party.
I really enjoyed the Descent.
I loved the combat and the absolute sheer strength of the mobs. It really upped the difficulty. I had my best equipped party in the Deep Roads with me and I was going back to the main camp to refill potions often.
I found the bit on the Titans to be very interesting, and also kind of odd.
But I thought about some really interesting implications.
We have found a second place in three games that darkspawn never visit, and that lyrium plays a huge role in. So, that begs the question. The Primeval Thaig, with a rock wraith guardian, and the wellspring with something remarkably like a rock wraith guardian, both have a huge impact due to lyrium, and neither are ever visited by darkspawn. They are nearly identical in every way minus the Primeval Thaig not having ancient dwarves in it.
So does that mean that Hawke and Varric ended up inside a Titan without realizing it?
I also felt a huge lack of party banter, and the experience was lesser for it. Dragon Age's party banter often times makes the characters live for us.
I also found some of the side quests beyond tedious. I spend 3 hours, after I cleared a floor level, looking for 22 gears, and I gave up looking for all the mugs, and ended up with 9/10.
I felt, after beating the DLC, that while I enjoyed the ride, I was hoping for more satisfaction. I don't mind if an ending has a little ambiguity to it, but the Descent left me with so many questions that I can sit back and say I really enjoyed the ride, the implications and unresolved questions on what happened has me shaking my head.
I think this is probably going to go the same way as Legacy. Corypheus gets introduced in DA2's DLC, but doesn't get resolved until Inquisition.
FIX THE FINAL BOSS FIGHT!!!
After 5 attempts and having all my characters one shotted I gave up trying.
It made no sense. I was at level 27, played through the entire thing without leveling up which is crap, but made it through doing all the side content, only to face a boss that is one shotting my entire party.
Kill two sets of arms then focus ont he glowing orb between them, dodge any glowing circles that appear on the ground. Rinse and repeat as the arms get back up.
Kill two sets of arms then focus ont he glowing orb between them, dodge any glowing circles that appear on the ground. Rinse and repeat as the arms get back up.
The arms have terrible hit boxes though. I tried hitting them with DD rogue, but all I ended up doing was hitting air, then getting squished.
Depends on the Qunari using them. Generally do not like to mix Fantasy and Sci-Fi, but also like Thundarr the Barbarian.
Current Qun? No, but these new Qunari of your could have the technology to be faster, stronger, better than before....
Doesn't have to be sci-fi. They can work around that bit. Space ships made from magic. Like the lyrium machine guns
You don't get it, the Lyrium Bolter is the weapon that Paragon Fairel designed to fight against the Darkspawn, and seeing dwarves use it against one another drove him to exile on the surface. Meanwhile, the Carta got their hands on a text describing the weapon, they made prototypes, one of them was reengineered by a Smith Caste Dwarf, and the result is Bianca.
There, I just wrote the Lore for you.
That is fan-fiction. It is Bioware's job to create the lore, and keeping it intact. So far they are failing miserably.
It's not lore-breaking I think. Mood-breaking, perhaps, but we already had 19th century clocks and dress uniforms in the base game. It was inevitable somebody at Bio said 'hey, they had machine guns in the 19th century, didn't they? So why don't we?'
'Whatever happens, we have got
the Maxim lyrium gun, and they have not'
Fully automatic before one-shots or semi automatic rifles....That is quite the leap in technology...
I haven't played The Descent, but reading a few threads on it gives me the feeling that BioWare are now trying to distance themselves from Origins even lore-wise, going from more grounded and down to earth to more fantastical/magical/exotic.
Maybe one of the next games will end the war agains the Qunari with a cutscene that shows a dirty lyrium ICBM flying out of its silo and the protagonist saying something like "It's going to be a really sunny day in Par Vollen".
I thought it was fine.
I mean the Titan stuff , the exploration , ...I'll give the team who worked on that Kudos for nailing the atmosphere.
I went from bored Titan Thaig , to horde of darkspawn "This is Hell!" , wanting to go back to the surface ASAP in the dark caves to WOAW this is pretty.
The two dwarves companion were cool , I really liked the Legionnaire dude way more than the female/
It doesn't get a great from me because :
Stupid side quests , picking gears isn't fun , and then opening doors just to find random loot isn't thrilling either.
I wasn't fed up with the shards in DAI , but the gears just killed me.
Companions (except the two dwarves) felt invisible.It was already a problem in DAI , with the lack of meaningful side quests , companions are sort of living in their isolated island .The party banter bug and troubles wasn't helping.
But it seems when it comes to banters and DLC , they just throw the baby with the bathwater.
The Deep Roads .Urgh!This one is a question of taste , I like the surface better.
The fights , some felt epic , the darkspawn with the fires and the epic music ...but after playing for couple of hours , hordes of mobs with high HP felt like a chore.
Last point , I liked the ending but....
It felt like the temple of Mythal take 2 dwarven version.
They used the same battle music .They reused a scene , where you're on the balcony.And Valta being obsessed with the Titans gave me flashback of Morrigan with the Well of Sorrow.
She's also a kind of strong minded scholar with black hair.
I didn't mind the lack of choice tooo much , but seeing my Inquisitor smiling while leaving when I was creeped out by the situation isn't great.
The whole dialogue tree implies you're worried , The Inquisitor obviously get over it super quickly.
Also no Dagna.
It wouldn't have been hard to swap Scout Harding with Dagna on this one and add a briefting at the end.
On the bright side , this DLC had one of the best inovation ever :THE MINI WAR TABLE!!!!!
What do I think of 'The Decent'?
Well, I remember exploring large caves in the dark. Exiting.
There was a good atmosphere in these caves and tunnels. The intense darkness made it so. My god, you could fall down any minute! Dangerous place.
And what else did I fancy?
Not much. There were some caves, and there was a new character named Valta.
But most of all I just remember the caves. Huge caves and darkness.
As one of the poor benighted devils who were locked out of the DLC because we chose to purchase for our 360s instead of our PCs, I was really upset that I couldn't play this DLC. (As a grown-up, with grown-up responsibilities, I can't see shelling out almost $500.00 just to play a DLC.) Fortunately, someone was kind enough to play it and put it out there for we, the "red-headed stepchildren" of Dragon Age to watch. Now, I don't feel so bad.
As everyone mentions, the DLC presents more questions than answers, and there was a lot of fighting with very little dialogue in between. What could have been a great little romance was nothing, and even when you take a Surfacer with you; i.e.,, Varric, It doesn't add to the dialogue (at least not what I saw on the playthrough).
So, I'm happy. I got to borrow the book and read the story. I don't need the extra levels to defeat Cory - Jaws of Hakkon made him almost irrelevant. We'll see what the next DLC brings. Who knows, maybe my 360 will die in meantime (although it is some workhorse! It's lasted for years), or maybe Bethesda will come out with the next edition of the Elder Scrolls requiring a ONE. As far as I can tell, what you got out of this was a lot of combat, a lot of gold, some loot, and another question to answer.
(And as someone above mentioned, another level of "bait and switch" in the advertising and marketing. I'd love to know who made these decisions. Was it Bioware? EA? Microsoft and Sony? It would be fun to know who thought it was a good idea to quit supporting the old consoles halfway through the game cycle.)
Also no Dagna.
And still, no Sandal. 0/10
I wonder, why BW is focusing on exploration (JoH) and combat (Descent) while companion interaction is their strongest side. Just look at BW fanbase- they care only about characters. I haven't seen something like that in any other game fanbase from other game studios.
This whole DA:I situation reminds me a bit of The Witcher 2. That game was different from TW1, because they totally abandoned very characteristic, Slavic atmosphere and mythology, to reach wider (western) audience. It's like BW is abandoning their best aspect to do the same- to reach wider audience. I'm a good example to prove that- I still remember playing DA:O for the first time- I was a dumb kid who only wanted to kill things, so I skipped almost all companion interaction. Same with Jade Empire. BW, please, don't try to appeal to people like this.
Fortunately, TW3 returned to the Slavic roots, because it's something that any other western game don't have. As we all know, it was a huge success, so I hope BW will do the same, but with their companion interaction. I'm playing Skyrim for exploration, Diablo for combat and MMOs for... umm, never mind. Anyway, I want diversity in games. I don't want DA to be everything at once.
My feedback: The Descent was awful. Please don't ever make anything like that again.
Okay, my feedback:
- Lore
We get tons of little clues and themes that bring new light to old things. Good. We get no new knowledge, except that Dagna was one with a Titan, and we know what Kieran was talking about. Cool. Also we know Titans have their own "blood cult", like dragon cults (blood of dragons), mage cults (blood of people), warden cult (blood of archdemon), we now have titan cult (blood of titans) with the Sha-Brytol,
- Art
Great.
- Companions
There's a lot of work to be done here. Please don't cut back on this, it's the core and soul of the game, the companions, their banters, their dialogue, their opinions and their input.
- Gameplay
I like the dungeon crawl. It's good. Good pacing too, with two massive exceptions and minor ones. I'll start with the minor exceptions:
I thought the lifts were loading screens at first, since they were unskippable. But then I found a way to bypass the second lift, just jump down a few cliffs and you're in front of the cave with the undead corpses. If they're skippable, please give us the option to "cut to black" after we've been through them once. I like being rewarded with a good shortcut through exploration though, so if you can't make it skippable, it's still fine.
Now for the bad parts.
Oh my god, fix the Emissary Alpha encounter. It was a good idea at first, but nobody likes 20 minutes fights where the slightest bug can force you to restart with no control whatsoever. And bugged it is - it's riddled with bugs left and right. In order of occurence:
- AI stops working. Regardless of which AI, companion, mandatory companion, enemy, respawning enemy, boss... they all have a random chance for their brain to stop working. The only fix I found for companion is to take control of them and jump to "unstuck" them, it's the only key that works. For monsters, I came to the conclusion that I should be exploiting it, because...
- the Bridge. Seriously. Everything here is immune to knockbacks, except you and your companions, and all the monsters on the bridge have knockback abilities. When you somehow manage to push something down the cliff, they teleport back up instantly. Except of course your companions, who can be knockbacked but always survive and become stuck downstairs. With no body and no notification, you have to constantly keep an eye on them, and retreat to the start of the area to teleport them. At least kill them when they fall or something.
- the Ogre Punch: seriously? Why does it randomly do 150% more damage, one-shotting you if you're not a Champion with Unyielding or if you don't know in advance it might randomly do 2500 total damage to your tank instead of 50? Why not, I don't know, give your Ogre a glow or make one of your companions say something about some bloodlust in their eyes or something? You know, like, a boss mechanic, not an "I can randomly lose if I don't explicitly cut my damage in half the whole fight".
- Monsters and Party members falling through the world and/or teleporting to unreachable places: if it happens to one of the bosses (Ogre on the roof, Emissary Alpha on the ledge below the bridge...), you're done. If it happens to you (party teleports to you after you fell and survived for instance, or straight up falling 6 feet below the floor) you have to reload.
- the Balance: Listen, it's cool to make beefy monsters for solo rogues to be challenged, but when you do that, solo sword and shield warriors are the most nerfed of them all. I challenge you to try killing a hurlock archer with a sword and shield warrior. And don't give me that "you're not a dps role". I have a sword, they don't, and they bleed. They should die in less than a minute of frantically mashing autoattack. I would be fine with dealing 20% of the damage of a rogue or a mage. The world would probably not end. Right now it's more like 1%, and it's a bit infuriating. Can our attacks please at least do damage on knocked down monsters, or could Mark of the Rift damage be normalized, or is that too much to ask?
- Last but not least, what the hell was that? I know I'm a special kind of masochist for soloing nightmare as an unspecialized sword and shield warrior, but seriously, after three days of attempts, after two hours on that particular attempt, after I finally managed to get past the two Ogres, and half an hour into the Emissary Alpha fight, you give me this?
The rest of the DLC was actually cool. When I completed it in a full party I didn't encounter much opposition, but it started feeling like a long grind to kill and loot all those Earthshakers.
Retour en haut