I have thought about this issue and for me personally I think DAO would have been a greater game in my eyes were it not for BG. I guess it's the same for anyone who's parent(s) is really famous for something and they're trying to follow in their footsteps.
I think DAO has great potential it just doesn't live up to it on all accounts. With that said it took me 128 hrs on my first playthrough and that easilly beats most games hands down if you look at hours of entertainment per dollar.
Here are some thoughts I have on DAO compared to BG2 when it comes to linearity, story progression and character development:
Both the BG games are fairly open compared to DAO. Even though BG2 was not as open in exploration as BG1 it had alot more freedom almost from the start in where to go and how to approach things. But on top of that BG2 does a much better job at giving me the illusion of nonlinearity because I'm constantly travelling back and forth. Many of the sections had me going from place to place and coming back to areas that I had visited previously that had now changed. This made the world seem more alive.
An example of this: Travelling outside the city for the first time you encounter a poisoned NPC that wants you to take him back to the city. Now if you're not an evil douchebag you're going to comply, possibly after asking him for some sort of reward if you're greedy.
This puts in a break in your current objective where a new more important objective has come up, saving this man's life. After getting back to the city the location you take the man to has changed. There's a house where you drop him of that you can now explore and where you can now interact with new characters.
This sort of thing happens alot in BG2.
In DAO in contrast you generally move from one spot to another, first through the origin then Ostagar and the wilds moving on to Lothering and then you generally deal with one area of the time, collecting treaties. This makes the world feel much more on rails like you're doing deliveries going by a checklist. You can mix up the order you do some of the stuff but it all feels a bit sectioned off and isolated from each other. It's almost like you're visiting different worlds that have no direct relation to each other. The elves have their world, the dwarves their world and so on.
Concering characters I have to agree with those that think the DAO characters are more developed overall than the BG2 characters. That is not to say that you might subjectively find the particular personalities or styles of some BG2 characters more appealing to you personally, in fact I personally do care for some BG2 characters more than any of the DAO characters, but I think in terms of actual material and the means of presentation and emotional impact, the DAO characters have just been developed more thoroughly (as in time spent by the devs writing them) and the technology utilized in 3D cutscenes to create an emotional connection with the player is just superior.
However.. and here I agree with some previous posters, the way your relationships unfolds in DAO is generally inferior to how it is handled in BG2. The problem is similar to that in Mass Effect in that the NPCs are totally passive in this regard and it all boils down to "interviews" conducted with them in between missions. In contrast in BG2 npcs will actively initiate conversations between you and each other and will draw you in to them as you travel along, this does so much to make it feel like you have an actual party of different individuals that have opinions not just on your actions but on each other as well.
On top of that I feel that the silent pc just doesn't work as well in DAO as it does in BG2. For one all of your companions dialogue is spoken not just some and more importantly you're constantly treated to cutscenes and animated dialogue where you see them talk, give different body & facial expressions and so on at the same time as you see your own character mutely starring at this or that. It works ok for a time but as the game goes on it becomes increasingly jarring to me, particularly if I've been playing a very social character yet he never says a word.
I know he says alot all the time but the fact that I see his mute face time and again contrasted against the speech of everyone else around him makes me feel like my character is very quiet and withdrawn. Even though I mentally know that this is not the case, this is what I feel emotionally. I understand all the reasons for not having PC VO and I agree with them for the most part since I can't think of a really good solution of the top of my head but I feel it is an issue that needs to be resolved somehow for the immersion factor to keep pace with technology.
Another problem in DAO is the gift and approval system. I wonder how many have actually seen their relationships drop very low with a character. I imagine you'd have to go really out of your way to do so. On a recent playthrough my evil character killed one of his allies for no reason whatsoever and this got a grand total of approval shift of -3 from Alistair when I felt it should probably be something like -30. This in itself wouldn't be a terrible flaw if it wasn't for the gift system totally breaking with the idea that your choices ingame has an impact of your relationships with your companions. You can act against a npc's wishes in more or less every conversation in the game and still have them love you as long as you keep throwing gifts at them. The philosophy here seems to be very forgiving of the player and ensuring that they can run any party with any type of character despite the fact that it was advertised that you'd have to be careful about your decisions because they would have a big impact on followers.
Now it wasn't really hard to please followers in BG2 either in general but it seems to me that there were alot more occasions where the outcome of a single decision or event could cost you a follower. For example romantic interests fighting over you, characters fighting between themselves. I remember being attacked by Jaheira when I went against my word and killed an innocent to obtain an item he had promised as a reward for helping him with a dangerous quest for example.
I think there are some similar situations in DAO but I would say that party management in general in BG2 was more difficult and to me more enjoyable. I want npcs that fight with me, get upset, throw tantrums, threaten me and so on. These emotions are great for a RPG and should come to the fore when so much is at stake in the game world.
Heh, guess I have alot of stuff to write on the subject. I originally planned to do a long list of different comparisons but I'll stop here for now and maybe consider some other areas later.
Modifié par Gliese, 23 mars 2010 - 06:07 .
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