Reyno411 wrote...
6.5 for me. Things I don't agree with:
- More of past companions. I didn't mind it, honestly. Of course, I was definitely a little miffed that Alistair showed up and couldn't drop the formality for a very good friend.
- Companion dialogue. I like the way the dialogue was done. There was, however, too little of it. FAR too little.
- Plot. Great at the beginning, but totally confused/bored me later on
Still, I had the same feeling as you when I finished, Or rather, about an hour before the end. I was ready for it to be over, and when it was I didn't bother with it any more. Also, I thought it was a little awful how they forced the PC to leave the Wardens (I'm assuming they have reason for this), but I was lucky enough to be playing a character whose personality allowed for it. Throwing in the part about him reuniting with Leliana was a pleasant surprise and happily received, so I appreciated that. It was something he was very likely to do. I don't have it in me for another go-around, though.
I ended up not minding so much that the DAO companions didn't carryover, except in the choice for Ohgren to be the carryover, and except in the instance of Dog and the reasonable LIs that could be in play (Lelianna and Zev). I think it would have solved many issues if instead of Ohgren, the PC had a choice of Zev of Lelianna for Awakening.
The main problem that I have with the new convo system is that its claim to "help" you have a more organic relationship with your teammates and avoid the necessity to keep checking in with them, when, in fact, it's a much more limiting experience because you can miss the dialogues entirely unless you rotate your mates through your traveling party and ensure every mate travels everywhere at least once to find inanimate dialogue points. I don't know about anyone else but I like traveling with my favorite mates. I don't want to have to spent time traveling with mates that don't suit my interests just to make sure I can talk to them.
in reality, this inanimate object system only works if you have a set team, e.g. you don't have a larger number of mates you would have to rotate. So in Awakening, the system was fine for more than half the game, where my only option was to bring along the only three mates that were available to me. But as soon as I picked up Justice and Valenna, I had a problem.
But funny thing happened when I picked them up: I realized that there was no more inanimate convo points for my old three mates and the new two had points that would come up in the same places on the map. The bottom line seemed very obvious to me. The system is PRIMARILY designed to save BW money on writing and voice acting, not to make it a more organic experience for us as is claimed. The system limits our ability to control when and how often we speak to our mates; it detracts from our ability to choose and direct our RPG experience. It is structured to find a palatable way to provide us with LESS. Strangely, I find this unpalatable.
As for the plot, I didn't think it was a rational option under any circumstances for humanity to come to any sort of accord with the darkspawn or the Architect. It was clear that the Architect's interference led to the darkspawn not retreating upon the death of the old god, and resulted in continued human devastation. It seemed clear to me that the darkspawn were very like vampires, parasitical and requiring humans for sustainence, breeding and acclimation. Thus, the argument that they are somehow enslaved to the song of the old gods, and need to be freed so they can evolve, and the notion that the warden blood needed to free the darkspawn is analogous to the grey warden ritual wasn't compelling.
I think the one thing they missed out on, however, was having the captured wardens being kept alive to provide this massive amount of blood they would need to convert darkspawn-dom. A dead warden supplies only a finite amount of blood. It would have been interesting to effect this rescue, and it also supplies a way for Duncan to be alive. LOL
Modifié par tmelange, 19 mars 2010 - 03:49 .
That makes me sick to my stomach. The only thing in the epilogue that made me remotely smile was Anders leaving, then two weeks later stumbling back, because it fit his character. The whole Leliana one sentence blurb pissed me off... "that's it!"
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