- Better graphics
I know, I know, Graphics are not everything... but I certainly find it much more satisfactory to be amazed by great designs, wonderful animations, and to actually be taken aback by the beauty of environments/designs/characters.
This also involves a more... unique look of the companions and/or more important NPCs. In DA, I felt most characters are just toolset-generated, and lack a certain personality. I hate to compare, but ME was much more interesting and diverse in this regard. (Zaeed, Jack, Jacob, Miranda, Joker... ), though characters like Duncan or Morrigan were impressive, most were not. When I saw the conceptdesigns for the companions I would prefer the original designs to their current ones.
- Make choices, really, really matter. I want consequences, real consequences. "The Witcher" had a great system in this regard, and I can remember that something similar to it has been advertised during the development of DAO, but ingame I haven't seen choices that would haunt me much later ingame, and couldn't be rectified with a simple reload of an earlier safegame.
- Give the codex-pages a bit more colour and diversity. Spice it up with drawings/ anatomical renderings of monsters, notes, little things. Or maybe even let it be read out loud.
And PLEASE, PLEASE don't stack it together with NUMBERS. One of the most annoying things for me was to browse through dozens of codex-entries just to catch the one I'm searching for by sheer luck. Give it titles, categorize it better. "Lycanthropes and wolves" is far better than Codex entry "25" or "The History of the Chantry" is better than Codexentry "101".
- Get rid of instances. It might work in such vast areas like the Deep roads, but it gets one hell of annoying to be that limited within a city, or a forest. For me, it breaks a lot of the immersion.
It looked the most ridiculous in Denerim, where we practically could only visit the marketplace and the Alienage... and even for the transition between those two we needed a loadingscreen, even though only a BRIDGE seperated the two instances from each other.
I can understand we need different instances when we move from exterior to interior, or from one level to a higher/lower level... but it should be limited to that.
- Make cities more lively. Add jesters, childs, moving people, guards patrolling, shady thugs, animals, chickens running away... all cities/villages/camps looked a bit sterile and stiff, with people just standing around in some corners.
Make forests more lively. Deers speeding away, birds, wolves howling in the distance, not attacking you but following you, keeping an eye on you...
- I would adore a day/night - cycle, if implemented in a good way.
- Make the races/origin really matter. Of course there are small things in DAO that nudge the player to his chosen origin, but in the end it didn't matter what you played, everything came out the same way. This goes even so far, that my Dalish elf could influence the whole Landsmeet, without anybody mentioning that she wouldn't have the slightest clue about human politics.
Make questlines open to some races, and closed to others, let my elf be treated just like that. An elf. I always only HEAR about how awfully the elves are treated, and that the racism doesn't stop, but do I feel it? Not a bit.
There are so many great options for conflicts, but they are not used.
- Get rid of epilogues like in DA:O. Oh god get rid of it. I don't exactly need a ongoing game after the ending of the story-arch, but everythings better than written epilogues.
- Make my companions care about MY PC for once. Yes, I love the diversity and depth of character of the companions, but I feel like the relationships that are build between my character and my companions are only one-sided. I have to play their surrogate psychiatrist during the whole game, but nobody cares about my characters.
That's about it for now... as if anybody would read it anyway...
Modifié par Yenaquai, 02 avril 2010 - 09:19 .