Dragon Age 2
NeonSpyder
"Das est NTLDR?" Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17913Members
"Das est NTLDR?" Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17913Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">(General discussion & reception. Some spoilers)</div>So... what do we think?
I've completed the game now and I'm a little torn. Someone said it extremely well in another thread on another website and I'll paraphrase here:
"Dragon Age 2 is very fun and addicting but ultimately disappointing."
They've clearly refined the formula, a lot of the story elements (both minor and major) appear to be more streamlined and overall tighter, mechanically speaking. Whenever the game tried, it could tug heartstrings and excite you by offering and promising a weaving and subtle plot along with grand new adventures. The trouble? There's no payoff. We don't ever get the exciting story that seems to have all the parts necessary to build up to.
It's unfortunate that the most anticipated part of the story (the deep roads expedition) ends way too suddenly, being a simple mission rather then a grand expedition, and the exciting plot points discovered during the expedition? Well, let's just say that they had the potential for a great story to follow but they never chased after it, instead letting it simply linger and punch the clock at the end of the game.
I won't even get into the re-use of maps which thousands of others have complained about already, but as far as I'm concerned even though it was a poor thing to do, at least they tried to do a decent job of changing doorways and passages so it wasn't so obvious that you were running through the same dungeon for the dozenth time.
The best thing I could say about the game is that it needed another year of development and another Act, with proper plot resolution and development. The trouble is, unlike a game like Oblivion where you can mod the ever-living crap out of it, you can't 'fix' the main story of a game like this since that's pretty much the whole point and they dropped the ball.
Your thoughts?
I've completed the game now and I'm a little torn. Someone said it extremely well in another thread on another website and I'll paraphrase here:
"Dragon Age 2 is very fun and addicting but ultimately disappointing."
They've clearly refined the formula, a lot of the story elements (both minor and major) appear to be more streamlined and overall tighter, mechanically speaking. Whenever the game tried, it could tug heartstrings and excite you by offering and promising a weaving and subtle plot along with grand new adventures. The trouble? There's no payoff. We don't ever get the exciting story that seems to have all the parts necessary to build up to.
It's unfortunate that the most anticipated part of the story (the deep roads expedition) ends way too suddenly, being a simple mission rather then a grand expedition, and the exciting plot points discovered during the expedition? Well, let's just say that they had the potential for a great story to follow but they never chased after it, instead letting it simply linger and punch the clock at the end of the game.
I won't even get into the re-use of maps which thousands of others have complained about already, but as far as I'm concerned even though it was a poor thing to do, at least they tried to do a decent job of changing doorways and passages so it wasn't so obvious that you were running through the same dungeon for the dozenth time.
The best thing I could say about the game is that it needed another year of development and another Act, with proper plot resolution and development. The trouble is, unlike a game like Oblivion where you can mod the ever-living crap out of it, you can't 'fix' the main story of a game like this since that's pretty much the whole point and they dropped the ball.
Your thoughts?
Comments
This one is just confusing. This was a very common complaint about Mass Effect 1, and Bioware listened to that and fixed it in Mass Effect 2. And now they go back and make the same mistake again? It makes no sense. When you make a mistake, you either learn from it or you don't. You don't learn from it and then un-learn from it again.
Weird.
I've completed the game twice now, a rather quick playthrough with a mage and a more extensive one (±90% of the quests) with a rogue. A friend of mine asked my opinion about the game and I couldn't really find the right words, but your quote there is quite accurate.
Bioware's games always get me hooked like there's no tomorrow, and DA2 did too. I really enjoy some of the new changes like voice acting for the Champion or the dialog wheel (it's now clear if you're going to insult someone or just tell a joke), and you can finally be reckless and piss off your companions and still get benefits out of that. Accelerated combat also feels better, especially for two-handed weapons and basic mage attacks.
However, I fear for DA2's re-playability. Aside from the re-use of maps mentioned previously, I feel kind of forced to take the same companions over and over again. If you want a healer, then you're stuck with Anders since Merril does not have a single healing spell, let alone access to the Spirit Healer specialization (<span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'>Bethany gets taken to the Circle if you leave her behind for the expedition, I wonder if she dies in the Deep Roads otherwise. I know my Carver did, but maybe because I wasn't nice enough with him</span>), or you have to do it yourself as a mage. You'd also want a rogue with you so you can unlock those chests and disarm those traps, but the trap detection range is so small that you end up triggering them anyway if the rogue is not ahead of the party. I'm hoping that mods will come out to make the game a little more flexible, but the lack of tool set makes it harder.
The story feels overall less epic than in DA:O, where you were one of the last Grey Wardens and you had to fight infinity darkspawn + 1 Archdemon. What I like though is that there is no 100% good / evil, so everyone is always kind of wrong, which makes taking sides a little more interesting (<span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'>although everyone just die in the end...</span>).
I could go on for hours, but I'll frist see what you guys have to say :p
Oh, and there really needs to be some kind of hairdresser and fashion designer revolution in Thedas because frankly, most of the NPCs felkt like déjà -vu.
Until there's a South Park episode about Dragon Age II or something else, yes every game thread must entail some form of World of Warcraft comparison, reference or commentary.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So, some fun facts about Metacritic.
Apparently, on day 1, a few hours after the game released, several people immediately jumped in and gave it glowing 10 reviews. Nobody thought anything of it ( but 4chan ), but now, somebody actually went back and checked these people.
Every single account but one was made that day.
He then went and started tracing the usernames, and lo and behold, most of these usernames are names many members of the Bioware staff use as handles.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
also
<img src="http://i52.tinypic.com/2zs08zm.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<a href="http://blog.brentknowles.com/2010/08/15/bioware-brent-year-10-fall-2008-summer-2009/" target="_blank">http://blog.brentknowles.com/2010/08/15/bi...08-summer-2009/</a>
I haven't finished Dragon Age II yet (I'm very close), but it really does irk me how they made it go so wrong compared to the first. As I have heard it called, it is sort of a "dragon effect 2" and certainly it's a polished, and solid game. What I can't ignore, though, is how completely is lacks the soul of the first installment. (Mass Effect 2 is a great game in its own right, but it was also the followup to ME1 done right. Why take DA:O, gut it, and repackage it as (a bad version of) mass effect in a medieval/fantasy setting?
The Narrow, narrow, <i>narrow</i> scope of the game's story is so bothersome. DA:O was a truly epic adventure to so many places. Dragon Age 2 is about a character (your character) that I barely even care for in a city that I care even less about, on a backdrop that has almost nothing to do with the first game. The entirely of the game seems to be equivalent in scope to a single portion of the main quest in DA:O. The locations are repetitive and bland (there's really no adventure to be found). Even when completing major plot points and fights, you don't find yourself in any new locations. They've clearly tried to appeal to a larger audience but I think they've ended up alienating the people who loved Dragon Age (and all of biowares older RPGs) the most. I hope they realize how much they screwed up there and try to address those problems if they make any more DA games.
There's another big problem with the story for me. The game suffers from the same problem that some movies suffer from. When you take small events (each act in dragon age 2) and space them apart by long periods of time, it just makes the whole thing less interesting. You trade the potential to go into detail and add complexity for a try at emphasize the grand scheme of things over time. For me at least, that ruins the pacing of everything story wise. In a book, this sort of thing is not as much of a problem, because you have as much time as you want to go into detail and weave plotlines. In a movie, you only have 2 to 3 hours at most to tell your story. In dragon age 2, I found it very problematic. What has my character been doing for 3 years? I have no idea.
fightingamphibians, but going by the failed URLs (which I removed) it was a copy-paste. At any rate, some google fu yields:
<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/g3td7/dragon_age_2_conspiracy_highest_rated_metacritic/" target="_blank">http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/g3...ted_metacritic/</a>