Aldandil wrote...
That, I would say, is BG2's greatest advantage. People cheering for combat complexity in BG2 tend to forget that a lot of it was very straightforward. The BG party members weren't really more evolved than the ones in DA:O, many of them were significantly less so. I think BG2 is a better game, but that is mostly because it was bigger. Size does matter?
There's more to it than that, I think. There were a lot of pretty basic fights, but also a lot of memorable ones. But that's just the start. In DA:O, you are basically told when to fight. You can't (AFAICT) attack anyone you're not supposed to. You can't simply avoid a fight by sneaking by (or leave an area while enemies are about). You can't get the jump on anyone by attacking first except in a very limited way. You can't avoid ambushes because the enemy doesn't spawn until you walk over the trigger (BG was guilty of this too, but abused it less). You can't really control whether you're in combat mode or not, which affects what you're allowed to do, regardless of whether any enemies are visible. There are no partial victories or partial losses: you fight until everyone on one side is dead, and if you win, everyone on your side is back to full health. Resources replenish automagically between fights so there is little concept of resource management or conserving health or magic for the next fight: you just hit as hard as you can with everything you can all the time. You can't kill bystanders or turn allies into enemies by fireballing them or otherwise making indiscriminate use of AoE spells. Becuase of the way level scaling works, it makes little difference when you choose to take on an enemy in most cases, eliminating that strategic element. In short, in BG, you had to make more tough decisions, and sometimes the consequences were disastrous. In DA:O, for the most part (not always, but mostly) you are told when you have to fight, and as long as you kill all of them before they kill all of you, you are successful and move on.
The non-combat quests are similarly dumbed down. A lot of the puzzles simply involve following a recipe that you find somewere. There isn't much puzzling at all. So far, there's only been one actual puzzle. Ironically, it was also the only mandatory puzzle: the others have just been about following instructions that basically say: click here, then here, then here, then here, then fight something, then get your reward.
Look at pickpocketing, for example: in BG you can steal, but the penalty for getting caught can be pretty serious, especially if you pickpocket the wrong person. On the other hand, there are a few people who have some really worthwhile things to pickpocket. In DA:O, stealing is basically something that either succeeds and nets you some generic item or fails and does nothing. Strictly speaking, it is to your advantage to try to pickpocket everyone you meet in the game, no matter how poor your skill and no matter whom the target.
DA:O has really good voice acting, good writing, good graphics with a few really stunning vistas, some select moments of really deep immersion, and an interesting game world: Ferelden is more convincing than the Sword Coast or Athkatla. Baldur's Gate has greater tactical involvement, more open-ended decisions for the player as to exactly how to get through the game (including multiple ways to go either through or around enemies) fewer mandatory confrontations, more consequences for choices made (though it is, admittedly, pretty easy to guess the optimal choice most of the time) more risk (especially on core and higher where your party members can be chunked and permanently lost) and more NPCs with interesting interactions. It also has puzzles that take some thought to figure out, though rarely if ever does a player's inability to solve a puzzle absolutely prevent him or her from completing the game).
Modifié par plastic golem, 15 février 2010 - 10:52 .
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. In DA:O it was all layed out for me beforehand, and I could predict the entire thing after about 5 hours of playing - I'm going to avoid going into detail because of the "NO SPOILERS ALLOWED" sign on this forum (which doesn't seem to stop anyone else...), but my point should be clear lol.
Did not have to compete with the visual's expected from modern gaming today.
