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[Mad Note]

First off I'd like to take a moment to address all of the hardcore fans who will counter this thread with simple responses such as "This is only an expansion" or "The game is amazing it had no flaws" but lets not kid ourselves, take a serious glance at the product we've been given, and really consider if BioWare has honestly produced something they should be proud of or simply stuffed something onto the market to milk extra cash out of what was an amazing game (Origins).

As far as the argument of it was only an expansion lets consider what the purpose of an expansion is.  When other games come out with an expansion pack, it adds on content.  Adds new features, new improvements, and gives access to more in the form of an attachment to the original game.  Is there really any need to have played or even own Origins for this product?  You can start with a created character, little to none of the content travels over (with the exception of your gear and whether its Alistair or Anora giving a brief cameo), and none of the actual map of Origins is even used or accessable.  This is an entirely new game.  Copy/paste the combat system, add some new moves and new maps/enemies.  This is NOT, however, an extension to the original game, bottom line.  They have sold us a rushed and poorly produced sequel that lets you bring along an old model or make a new one.

Now, to move on to all the issues as to why this game is incredibly inferior to the original.  Should the game be an equal?  Of course not.  Should the game have an equal amount of content?  No, its an expansion.  Should the game dumb down the quality and gameplay value?  No, but it did. 

Things that QA and testers should be ashamed of themselves for ignoring/missing (my game was played via PS3, not all bugs may be the same for PC and Xbox players of course):

*Importing an Incomplete Character -- If you chose to import a character who has yet to finish the game, you are able to get a boost to be on par with the newly created one, level 18, however you do lose all your gear as it is replaced with a sub-standard pre-set of items.

*Armor of the Sentinel -- No one managed to notice the graphics for humans was glitched?  All play testers were dwarves and elves?

*Responses to a Female Warden -- Not one NPC has called my female character "My lady" or anything of that gender, its always sir.  "Please sir, help us" will say a commoner npc, or "Thank you sir"  for when you turn in quests.  Was this product truly so rushed they forgot you can create a female character?

*Character Statistics --  Apparently I've discovered 100% of the map before I left Vigil's Keep, and while my pc does 38% of the party damage, no one else in my party does above 5%.  My guess is they couldn't figure out how to reset the stats from Origins when the character moves over, but hey we wouldn't want to take any time making something with accuracy, right?

*Silverite Mines Equipment Loss -- One playthrough I was lucky, second one not so much.  Various items (yes all 4 experimental subjects were killed and looted) went missing.  Upon checking forums, it looks as if I wasn't the only one.  How is it no QA testers noticed any issues with gear disappearing for this little event?

*Orlesian Voice Acting --  It was made clear in Origins that Orlesians had "French" accents, however that seems to have been too much effort in this case.  Any Orlesian npc lacks an accent, and even more so if you created an Orlesian Warden you still have the exact same character voices as Origins, despite hailing from a foreign country.

*Manual of Focus --  Two issues here.  Not all characters can use the item, and its not consistant.  One game I can use it on some characters, the others I cannot.  The second issue is attribute resets.  Is there a penalty of losing stats when doing a reset?  Do you retain your stats via Mage Circle Fade event in Origins and the Fade event in Awakenings?  Because upon reset of stats, there was indeed a loss.

*Lord Guy Killed Twice --  If Lord Guy acts out you can order to have him killed.  But later, he'll attack you when you are working on the conspiracy quest line.  Its ok though, surely no one at QA expected you to have him killed.

*Various Graphic Bugs -- You're either very lucky or simply not being honest if you can claim you had no bug glitches.  A few of mine include Anders graphic simply disappearing at one point, Velanna's model being replaced with the roots that she appeared in for an entire dialoge sequence, and all the glitchy ghost dwarves anyone could wish for in Kal'Hirol.


All that on top of the fact they killed character depth with removing the option to speak with characters, killed the story of removing nearly all of your old companions despite their outcomes in the end of Origins, and watered down the gameplay to the point of making is easily played solo.

I had read that this was merely made to help wrap up the story of Origins.  As opposed to wrapping up an epic tale, this "expansion" gives me the image of a two year old tearing into a Christmas gift, quite the opposite of wrapping.  Loyal fans, we've been used.  $40 for 10 hours of content is an utter joke. This is the perfect example of milking a cash cow.  We were promised an expansion loaded with improvements.  Do you honestly feel that is what we were given?  I think not.

[Dj LynZee]

EDIT: Never mind. Just read the part where you DID mention that.  

You should have added the lack of good character interaction, dialogue and development. I really wanted to get to know Velanna more. She was my favorite of those generic new companions. In fact, half the reason Origins even appealed to me as much as it did is because I'm a sucker for interesting characters, pursuing relationships with them and the like. I know Awakening gave the excuse of wanting to follow more of a 'story' but that doesn't mean they had to do such a half-assed job with the characters.

Modifié par Dj LynZee, 22 mars 2010 - 03:07 .

[Janichsan]

I can't say anything to the technical aspects and in regard to the contents, but concerning your "an expansion has to expand the original game" stance: I guess you never played Neverwinter Nights? It's expansions do exactly the same by being completely independent of the original game's campaign. Unlike in DA:A, you cannot even carry over your main campaign's character.

Modifié par Janichsan, 22 mars 2010 - 03:16 .

[caradoc2000]

Mad Note wrote...

*Responses to a Female Warden -- Not one NPC has called my female character "My lady" or anything of that gender, its always sir.  "Please sir, help us" will say a commoner npc, or "Thank you sir"  for when you turn in quests.  Was this product truly so rushed they forgot you can create a female character?

As a small side note: the Ser with an 'e'  they use in DAO is gender neutral - such as Ser Cauthrien.

[Proposition_Joe]

Little effort - Cheap money (and still people seems happy ,thats a feat to applaud)



Janichsan; I guess you never played NWN2 - MotB Thats how an expansion should feel.

[CybAnt1]

*Lord Guy Killed Twice --  If Lord Guy acts out you can order to have him killed.  But later, he'll attack you when you are working on the conspiracy quest line.  Its ok though, surely no one at QA expected you to have him killed.

Clearly, what you did not realize is Lord Guy is a rogue with the feign death ability .... 

[caradoc2000]

CybAnt1 wrote...

*Lord Guy Killed Twice --  If Lord Guy acts out you can order to have him killed.  But later, he'll attack you when you are working on the conspiracy quest line.  Its ok though, surely no one at QA expected you to have him killed.

Clearly, what you did not realize is Lord Guy is a rogue with the feign death ability .... 

Or he is just the other Guy.

[Gaddmeister]

Mad Note wrote...

Now, to move on to all the issues as to why this game is incredibly inferior to the original.  Should the game be an equal?  Of course not.  Should the game have an equal amount of content?  No, its an expansion.  Should the game dumb down the quality and gameplay value?  No, but it did. 

You list mostly bugs. Yes, it seems to be a lot of bugs (though luckily I haven't rncountered any major), but what does it lack in quality that makes you say it's "dumbed down"?

Mad Note wrote...

*Responses to a Female Warden -- Not one NPC has called my female character "My lady" or anything of that gender, its always sir.  "Please sir, help us" will say a commoner npc, or "Thank you sir"  for when you turn in quests.  Was this product truly so rushed they forgot you can create a female character?

Like someone pointed out to you earlier, the woman in your profile portrait is Ser Cauthrien. Did you not know that? Perhaps you shouldn't rush the game in 10 hours.

[vypz]

lets say just 4 arguments sake that these glitches wasnt in the gme and it played out properly because personaly i recon if it wasnt 4 these bugs which could be fixed with patches (and a french voice actor for orlisan wardens as a FREE download i think the game could be amazingly fun i ent gonna say there ent problems but i enjoy playing the game my oppinion tho

[Shadowrun1177]

My biggest pet peeve about Awakening's is the new dialog system. I miss the old one where you could talk to your party members anytime mostly at camp. Now I'm hunting around for triggers just so I can try to raise approval ratings with my party members and lord forbid if I miss one cause I don't have the correct party member in my group for the trigger.

[LadyVaJedi]

I agree with Mad Note here on this one. It was fun to play thought. I wish it did carry over more of what happened in DAO. When I think of expansion pack I think of Shivering Isles from Elder Scrolls.

[MutantSpleen]

Ser may be acceptable for a woman who is knighted by a Teryn, Arl, or Bann but as a mage I saw no reason why they would call me that. "My lady" or "Arlessa" would have been appropriate. It felt weird to me too, though I did know about Ser.



Also some that called you sir (ser) were commoners on the street. How would they know a title I held other than being the Arlessa?



I am thinking the OP is right in this case.

[EnchantedEyes1]

While I did enjoy playing the game I agree with your points. While I found DAO to be extremely enjoyable I found DAA to be just okay. I just created an Orlesian warden after having played my HNF and the game seems to make more sense for me from that perspective.



My elven mage is wondering where the h*ll Zevran is... sounds like she'll have to wait for the epilogue.



There were things I enjoyed about the game but it does feel thrown together. I'm just so surprised that it was the original DAO team that put this together, the characters seem to be so neglected. I found it odd that I cared so much less about my warden recruits than my previous companions.

But since I bought it, I will get my money's worth via time spent running all my DAO characters through.

[AnniLau]

I don't like the new dialogue system or the way the DA:O relationships were ignored, but the abruptness of the ending was the biggest issue for me. I was left with a very unsettled "Is that all?" feeling upon completion that the epilogue cards did nothing to assuage.

[Vizkos]

*Importing an Incomplete Character -- If you chose to import a character who has yet to finish the game, you are able to get a boost to be on par with the newly created one, level 18, however you do lose all your gear as it is replaced with a sub-standard pre-set of items.

While I never imported an Incomplete char, I agree the equipment you get at the start is subpar.

*Armor of the Sentinel -- No one managed to notice the graphics for humans was glitched?  All play testers were dwarves and elves?

Played through as a human male and I've had no issues.

*Silverite Mines Equipment Loss -- One playthrough I was lucky, second one not so much.  Various items (yes all 4 experimental subjects were killed and looted) went missing.  Upon checking forums, it looks as if I wasn't the only one.  How is it no QA testers noticed any issues with gear disappearing for this little event?

I personally noticed no missing items, unless I was missing a few poultrices or something.

*Orlesian Voice Acting --  It was made clear in Origins that Orlesians had "French" accents, however that seems to have been too much effort in this case.  Any Orlesian npc lacks an accent, and even more so if you created an Orlesian Warden you still have the exact same character voices as Origins, despite hailing from a foreign country.

I was thinking about this too, but your characters voice was such a small thing that it doesn't matter to me.  Your character only says like 3 words occationally when you encounter enemies or move, so its not that big of an issue for me.

*Manual of Focus --  Two issues here.  Not all characters can use the item, and its not consistant.  One game I can use it on some characters, the others I cannot.  The second issue is attribute resets.  Is there a penalty of losing stats when doing a reset?  Do you retain your stats via Mage Circle Fade event in Origins and the Fade event in Awakenings?  Because upon reset of stats, there was indeed a loss.

I think what it does is take your level and multiply it by 3 for stats, so yes if it does do that you'd lose your fade stats, so I can see this being an issue.

*Various Graphic Bugs -- You're either very lucky or simply not being honest if you can claim you had no bug glitches.  A few of mine include Anders graphic simply disappearing at one point, Velanna's model being replaced with the roots that she appeared in for an entire dialoge sequence, and all the glitchy ghost dwarves anyone could wish for in Kal'Hirol.

Only "graphics" related issues I've had are huge dips in FPS after about an hour or two.  I personally have had no models mess up.

Overall though I do agree with you that Awakening was a very watered down version of Origins, and when I beat the game for the first time, I pretty much said to myself "thats it?"  It is hardly the depth that Origins goes into both story wise and character wise.

[Janichsan]

Proposition_Joe wrote...

Janichsan; I guess you never played NWN2 - MotB Thats how an expansion should feel.

I have. It sucked. (Well, it wasn't as good as NWN 1 by far.) Anyway, not only is NWN2 not from Bioware, but both its other expansions (Storm of Zehir and Mysteries of Westgate) did the same as the original NWN's expansions.

I'm not saying that an expansion should be done that way, I'm just saying it's not without precedence. 

Modifié par Janichsan, 23 mars 2010 - 08:57 .

[Xeonor]

I agree with Prosthetics511, the bugs were really minor on pc at least. And as for the french accent you're asking for, i guess they shouldve added it, but its not like OMG ZE GAME SUKS! .

the expansion is good and fun to play. Yea the ending is disappointing, but the journey was fun at least.

Modifié par Xeonor, 23 mars 2010 - 09:28 .

[Efesell]

Janichsan wrote...

Proposition_Joe wrote...

Janichsan; I guess you never played NWN2 - MotB Thats how an expansion should feel.

I have. It sucked. (Well, it wasn't as good as NWN 1 by far.) Anyway, not only is NWN2 not from Bioware, but both its other expansions (Storm of Zehir and Mysteries of Westgate) did the same as the original NWN's expansions.

I'm not saying that an expansion should be done that way, I'm just saying it's not without precedence. 

MoTB was an awesome expansion.
Zehir is where everything went to hell.

[Xandurpein]

Efesell wrote...

Janichsan wrote...

Proposition_Joe wrote...

Janichsan; I guess you never played NWN2 - MotB Thats how an expansion should feel.

I have. It sucked. (Well, it wasn't as good as NWN 1 by far.) Anyway, not only is NWN2 not from Bioware, but both its other expansions (Storm of Zehir and Mysteries of Westgate) did the same as the original NWN's expansions.

I'm not saying that an expansion should be done that way, I'm just saying it's not without precedence. 

MoTB was an awesome expansion.
Zehir is where everything went to hell.

The journey in MoTB was very good, but the end totally sucked. It just left me hating everything about the stupid pantheon of Forgotten Realms in general and Kelemvor in particular, and really... Safiya (rolls eyes) was a new low in game romances...

[Efesell]

I don't recall having any problems with the ending or Safiya.

Though Gann is much more fun.

[Edje Edgar]

I agree with the OP. Allthough most of the listed comments are bugs, there was a lot more wrong with this game. In fact I played the PC version and I havent noticed any real bugs. My major gripes were with the continuation and the story progression, they were both subpar.

Why am I allowed to import an existing character if the only effect is that certain items get carried over. Hell even my approval with Oghren got reset to 0 (which seemed like a major retcon if you finished the game with him at 100). I am married to the queen, why would I kneel before my wife? Yes it would have meant you had to change 1.5 seconds of an ingame movie, but it would have helped with immersion. During the first hour I immediatiatly lost the feeling this was my old grey warden and you never get the feeling back that your character was the same who played origins.

As has been mentioned, the no longer being able to talk directly to party members "feature" annoyed me. The new feature with party members responding to certain items was good, granted. But why one instead of the other? Instead reduce the rediculous amount of gifts that are rather bland. A combination of item related conversation, in camp chat and special gifts that trigger dialogue would have been so much better.

The entire keep part felt so underdevelopped. I couldnt resist of thinking of neverwinter nights 2 when I got, what looked like, controll of the keep. I had expected it to be an even more indepth experience then a 4 year old game. It was quite the opposite. There's about 10% of the customization you had in NWN 2 and about 0% relevant choices. Even the trial felt inconsequential. In addition the peasant uprising is handled poorely, the developers apparantly have some stalinistic view that protests that arent smacked down violently result in uprisings. History shows us the exact oppesite, but whatever.

The story is vague, as seemed to be intended.  The "go figure out whats going on with the darkspawn" theme, could have been great. However I only found out what was happening during the final mission (when its explained by the architect). None of the sidequests reveal any overarching plots. Just darkspawn mischief. The story then abrubtly ends with me stabbing the fat lady. Boom -> end story remarks noone cares about.

Itemization felt worse then the first. There's two special massive breastplates but no random special massive loot to make use of them. There's two massive sets, but no heavy or medium ones. I liked that there's a good paladin like looking set and an evil overlord looking one. But why's the first of lesser quality tier then the other? Im not that much of a min - maxer but that just seemed arbitrary.

There were good things too though. I allready mentioned that the new conversation system had its strong points (however as an addition, not a replacement). Rune crafting was finally a proffesion I felt was usefull even for the more casual gamer. The addition of combat oriented skills so you dont spend everything just to get rid of the + at your portrait. Mages feel less mandatory to complete the game, albeit at the expense of trivializing content with rediculous abilities like massacre. 

All in all, when I finished awakenings it felt like I played dragon age 1.5. It wasnt a full game so it couldnt be 2, but was so disconnected from the first it couldnt be an expansion. It wasnt a bad game in the sense that I was annoyed or bored when playing it. But it was a bad expansion in the sense that I felt disconnected from my original character and it lacked any closure for part 1 such as it was marketed.

[Efesell]

Edje Edgar wrote...
I am married to the queen, why would I kneel before my wife?

Kneeling to the Queen as a show of formality, especially in front of soldiers, is hardly a surprise.

Modifié par Efesell, 23 mars 2010 - 10:00 .

[Edje Edgar]

Efesell wrote...

Edje Edgar wrote...
I am married to the queen, why would I kneel before my wife?

Kneeling to the Queen as a show of formality, especially in front of soldiers, is hardly a surprise.

Yes it is? Do you believe Anora kneeled before Cailan every time he entered a room where they were not alone? The king-consort does not kneel before the queen unless there's a big ceremonial reason like her coronation. That's the entire idea. Just because you cant overrule the queen doesnt mean you have no politcal power. Untill there's a child your are still first in the line of succesion.

It was just an example of trivializing choices made in the first game. Afterall its main attraction was all the different endings. Which have zero impact on the expansion. Apart from Anora saying "my husband" after every sentence as if Bioware wanted to show us they hadnt forgotten, just ignored it.

Modifié par Edje Edgar, 23 mars 2010 - 10:11 .

[Efesell]

Edje Edgar wrote...

Efesell wrote...

Edje Edgar wrote...
I am married to the queen, why would I kneel before my wife?

Kneeling to the Queen as a show of formality, especially in front of soldiers, is hardly a surprise.

Yes it is? Do you believe Anora kneeled before Cailan every time he entered a room where they were not alone? The king-consort does not kneel before the queen unless there's a big ceremonial reason like her coronation. That's the entire idea. Just because you cant overrule the queen doesnt mean you have no politcal power. Untill there's a child your are still first in the line of succesion.

Again, formality.
You are just prince-consort. You're "King" nothing, this is a royal visit to greet the new Commander of the Keep, there's nothing odd about your character kneeling.

[Edje Edgar]

Efesell wrote...

Edje Edgar wrote...

Efesell wrote...

Edje Edgar wrote...
I am married to the queen, why would I kneel before my wife?

Kneeling to the Queen as a show of formality, especially in front of soldiers, is hardly a surprise.

Yes it is? Do you believe Anora kneeled before Cailan every time he entered a room where they were not alone? The king-consort does not kneel before the queen unless there's a big ceremonial reason like her coronation. That's the entire idea. Just because you cant overrule the queen doesnt mean you have no politcal power. Untill there's a child your are still first in the line of succesion.

Again, formality.
You are just prince-consort. You're "King" nothing, this is a royal visit to greet the new Commander of the Keep, there's nothing odd about your character kneeling.

Restating a statement is not an argument. Further more prince-consort and king-consort are the EXACT same things. That's why its used interchangebly ingame. They are both empty titles and irrelevant. There's no royal title that exempts you from paying homage to the king or queen on every single occasion. Being married to one, or born to one does however change the relation. That was my point.

But congratulations on succesfully derailing the threat on details. If you think that's a realistic take on the situation, that's your god given right. I disagree, lets keep it that.