I'm not sure if that is exactly what Bioware wanted to accomplish with this expansion, lol, (or, perhaps it is, it's hard to tell with the choices they've made), but "the very end" is my distinct "end credits" feeling.
I pre-ordered the expansion, and it took me 16 hours to playthrough on normal. I think I missed 4 miscellaneous sidequests (e.g. I couldn't find the last dragon bone and got tired of looking; I was missing one crystal for the Tevintar thing and got tired of looking; I didn't do Wade's shopping lists because I ran out of time and couldn't find a component on each list etc.), and I didn't play around with the runecrafting system. I played a female human noble rogue who married Alistair at the end of DAO. My general disposition towards the franchise is that I've re-played DAO more times than I can easily count, and I have loved Alistair and the game entirely too much for it to be healthy.
As a general matter, I thought Awakening was much more...exciting? Interesting? ...for me than many of the individual parts of DAO. For instance, the basic plot of Awakening held my attention more solidly than the play in Lothering, or most of Denerim, or the Dalish forest, or the Circle of Magi. Likely, it's because Awakening was more political, and many of the sidequests had the feel of managing a situation in direct preparation for an assault. The interplay with the nobles, the discussions with the senechal, treasurer, and captain were interesting to me because I was in charge, lol. I liked having to decide troop placement, and whether to spend money on the walls, and having to keep an eye out for ore deposits to outfit the troops. Because all of that played to my particular tastes, I found I paid more attention to Awakening generally. I read more of the codex entries, and found that I had to understand the quests, rather than to just do whatever came up as I ran along.
Because I found Awakening so interesting, I feel my money was well spent, regardless of any other issue that I may have had with the expansion. I had fun, and it was more fun than I expected it to be. I feel it was a worthy stand-alone piece of the Dragon Age franchise, a must-have to be recommended, and was much more memorable than any expansion I can remember ever buying. Overall, I'd give it an 8.5 and expect to play it at least once more.
I felt the game exceeded my expectations on a number of points: the overall plot, as I've already mentioned, was tight and engaging; but also the characters. I liked the characters more than I expected I would, and regret not having time to really get to know them better. The only character that I didn't like was Valenna from a personality perspective, but then I really never liked the elves in DAO generally, so this is not something I can necessarily hold against the character. I even appreciated Ohgren a bit more than I expected. I didn't think his appearance in Awakening added anything to his character profile, and I still find him crass and of a type that I would ordinarily leave in camp, but he was fine, generally, and I found I wasn't bitter any longer about his selection as the DAO carryover.
If I were to mesh my two squads, I'd keep:
Alistair
Dog
Zevran
Sigrun
Justice
Nathaniel
Anders
Lelianna
Sten
So...pleasantly surprising.
On the short list of things I liked particularly are:
1) The notion of heraldic paint. Even though I didn't use it because I was playing a dual-wield rogue, I loved that it was an option. I really wanted to be able to do more with this ability.
2) The ability to upgrade the keep. Would have liked more of this component.
3) The wide array of special arms and armor, and the ability to add runes to everything. TPTB were right: you don't miss your old gear from DAO at all. Though I did try to hold out on wearing/using some pieces simply for sentimental value.
4) There seemed to be a bit more of the "puzzle" component to many of the Awakening sidequests than what was provided in DAO. Or at least to me it seemed that there were more instances where I had to think about what I needed to do and/or consult the codex.
5) Storage chest. Important to keep armor pieces in while I tried to collect the set.
6) I liked the silverite mine piece of the game and the fact that I had to hunt down particular darkspawn to get my gear back. That was funny.
7) I liked that none of the quests felt too long, or like you were stuck in something and had a long trek without dialogue to get out, like the Circle of Magi/Fade part of DAO.
8) I haven't yet used the rune crafting, but I like the notion of it.
9) I appreciated the manual of focus option.
10) What there was of an acknowledgement of my choices and circumstances in DAO I really enjoyed: seeing Alistair, if only briefly, and having him acknowledge the fact that we're still married; the noble that recognizes you as a Cousland; the Dark Wolf exchange; the whole way the Nathaniel Howe situation plays out with Cousland options etc. The fact that the title cards at the end confirmed that I went back to court.
11) I liked the design of the major quest locations better.
In sum, from a micro perspective, I enjoyed Awakenings and thought it was superior to DAO on some of the mechanical aspects. Of course, it's almost impossible to pull apart DAO since it's the totality that makes it special, and the thing that took DAO from a great game to a beloved classic in my mind was completely missing from Awakening. So while Awakening was fun, it doesn't engender that sense of attachment, there's nothing to fall in love with. I'm not going to remember any part of Awakening with the same sense of nostalgia as my human noble origin; or the horror when Duncan and Caillan were betrayed; or get that incredibly astounded feeling that I had when I realized how I could talk and flirt with Alistair (and my whole team) throughout the entire game, there was so much dialogue; or that kicked-in-the-gut, I-need-to turn-this-off-now feeling when Alistair dumped my character to become king; or the way my heart broke to have to betray Alistair to get the Loghain achievement.
It's funny -- it seems to me (from a customer perspective) that Bioware is desperately trying to find different (more cost effective?) ways of doing the things that it's known best for doing. The development of the RPG-lite elements of ME seem like a company trying not to be known for something they are currently very well known for; in Awakening, it seems (to me, at least) that the company is trying to find a way to sell to its core audience without having to give to that audience what it most expects. So we have a dialogue system in Awakening that is "improved" but completely lacks the elements that make Bioware's "signature" dialogue option tree special; we have the notion of "choices' and "consequences' that are the hallmark of recent Bioware games scaled back to the bare minimum; we have a company known for exceptional story and characters absenting characters that they've convinced us to love for no fan-based reason (since it's so close in time to the original release), except seemingly to prove that they can do so, and to keep a lower-cost option open so sales aren't dependent on the existence of certain characters.
But...why would a company want to do this these days? Why purposely disengage an audience from those things they are most attached to in this age of social media and fan-based marketing? Why would you design a project to break (rather than build on) attachments? I guess it's to replace specialized attachments with a more generic (more populous but less expensive) fanbase, but I question whether that's wise in the long run. (Perhaps it is. If the upper price tag on a video game is capped by industry standard, and there is no option to set a premium price point, there is no upside to catering to a specialized cost-prohibitive niche; mass appeal at the bottom of the economic pyramid -- selling as many units as possible -- would be the ultimate goal.)
My criticisms of Awakening all go to this issue:
1) My crew from DAO should be in evidence. Zevran is supposed to be helping me build up the Grey Wardens. Where is my mabari, at least? Why wouldn't my approval rating on Ohgren carry over? He hates me now? I thought he named his kid after me? If you're going to put in Wynne, why have her act as if we're veritable strangers? I'm afraid to play through my warden from DAO who made Anora queen and rode off into the sunset with Alistair to re-build the Grey Wardens. God only knows what strange reason there would be for him to have left me on my own to battle what seems to be one of the most serious darkspawn incursions since the blight (if not more serious than the blight in some ways), affecting a key strategic position within the kingdom.
2) I don't like the new conversation system. Not being able to initiate (except in rare instances) dialogue, or drive interaction with teammates directly is very Mass Effect. I very much dislike the notion of finding and clicking on an inanimate object to initiate conversation with a random teammate not of your choice. In my mind, the system preserves the least amount of control and choice possible, and control and choice are the reasons I play RPGs.
3) The ending was abrupt. It was so abrupt that it gave me that feeling you get when you have a party room or banquet hall reserved for a particular three hours, and there's a party/wedding scheduled right after and everyone has to vacate RIGHT NOW, even though we're in the middle of the electric slide. lol "You don't have to go home, but you got to get the hell outta here!"
I guess the bottom line in breaking these attachments is that it's likely cheaper for BW to do things this way--and they'll get their money out of people like me anyway. At least, they did this time.
But at what cost?
This time, I turned off my xbox and had no pressing desire to stay in Ferelden. This time, I believed that my warden's story was over, and I didn't really care. Now, I believe BW has no interest in preserving the very things they asked us to buy into when they asked us to become a fan for this "social" century: where our avatars are our wardens, and our gameplay is preserved in an on-line record, and our in-game life is so important to our on-line presence that we're expected (practically required) to maintain a continual internet connection to the stewards of our fandom.
It's as if the company has a standalone game paradigm, and is making product that should have the legs of a social phenomenon, without having the right mentality to bridge the standalone versus social dichotomy for the product over time.
I read the Awakening end cards, shrugged, turned off the xbox and said to myself, "That was good. Now I can put this away." I think the next Bioware workshop at a developers conference should be, "How to wean fans off of the things they love best about your games without alienating your core audience (or caring if you do)."
It's very similar to the way I feel (and many of my friends feel) about new television series these days. Why bother to get attached to any show as a viewer? Networks have little investment in new shows beyond the bottom line. They will cancel a show without giving it a proper marketing budget or the opportunity to find its legs. They have no concern about finishing a story. Then the networks wonder why no one watches serial TV, and why new series find it ever more difficult to find an audience. We're left with an endless propagation of sitcoms, reality TV and CSI.
In any event, I leave Awakening feeling satisfied with the gameplay, but alienated in my attachments as a fan. I feel like my in-game experience has been hard reset. The book is closed. Lesson learned: Don't fall in love with Bioware's greatness; don't lose your fandom heart to anything they create. The company will woo you and after the wedding, you'll get a 30 second interaction and a peck on the cheek.
*shrug* I would consider my feelings a disparagement if I didn't suspect that this disconnection is exactly what Bioware was trying to accomplish with this expansion, for some reason.
Modifié par tmelange, 18 mars 2010 - 04:06 .
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Now, we have a canned conversation system a la Mass Effect, where I interact with...inanimate objects and have no choice in who I speak to. It doesn't feel like an improvement to me.
