Dragon Age 2

[Kayin Amoh]

I always sort of fear that execs will trundle out a rushed RPG like DA2, watch the fan reaction be one of overall disappointment and then say something along the lines of 'well, looks like they don't like RPGs no more. Mass Effect 2 was game of the year and that upped the action quotient - let's make Dragon Age 3 an FPS with crossbows! Varric can put you through boot camp at the start for a tutorial, then you can have an on rails sequence on the back of a Dragon. Sounds awesome, right?'

On that note - get Dino Crisis 4 out, Capcom. The reason that franchise died wasn't because we didn't want Dino Crisis, what we didn't want was Dino Crisis in space with bloody jetpacks and a shit camera. >:|

[df0]

I am on my second play through and I can not be bothered. I skip all conversations (even new ones, I play as a Female Mage now and do the opposite of what my 'main' did), mash through battles, do not care about anything in the world besides gathering Trophies. And even that is too much of a chore. I think I am done with this game.

[smoothe]

Tbf, for all their talk of different storylines and your actions making a real difference, a second playthrough of an essentially story driven game being dull isn't too surprising, especially if you did most of the sidequests first time through...

[Talk Show Host]

Tbf, for all their talk of different storylines and your actions making a real difference, a second playthrough of an essentially story driven game being dull isn't too surprising, especially if you did most of the sidequests first time through...

That's true. Especially when the first playthrough was also boring.

Edit: Just saw this interview in the official forums. It was conducted by an Isreali site and the it was translated and posted from a forumite: interview.

The interview is with lead level designer, Yaron Jacobs.

His highlight response, for me, clearly shows the shit they are trying to cover with this shitty game:

Q: Why are the city's streets not as crowded as one can expect from a city as congested as Kirkwall? Is it due to technical limitations?

A: Yes, this is completely due to technical limitation. We had more people crowding the streets in early stages of development but we had to cut the number to be able to cope with the limitations of game consoles and low-end computers.

And also:

Q: Blood Magic is a forbidden art in the world of DA2, but the main character uses it freely during the game against civilians and Templars. How is that logical?

A: Well, sometimes you have to give up perfect inner logic to make the game more fun. This is one of these cases. Anyway, this can be explained by the fact that the champion is someone who can do whatever he wants. No one is bold enough to lecture him about that. This is kind of like when the authorities ignore certain crimes because the criminal's aid is of great importance.

It's a nice but marketing-like read. Sorry if it's been posted before.

[SteveH]

That city streets comment is hilarious considering how long it's been since the first Assassins Creed was launched with the busiest streets ever.

Quick question. Maybe I'm missing something, but now I have moved into my new house, when I stash stuff, I can't compare the stats when wanting to retrieve weapons for my companions, as I'm always alone. Surely I don't have to fanny around leaving the house, creating a team, trying out who suits what, and then going back home again?

[revlob]

Quick question. Maybe I'm missing something, but now I have moved into my new house, when I stash stuff, I can't compare the stats when wanting to retrieve weapons for my companions, as I'm always alone. Surely I don't have to fanny around leaving the house, creating a team, trying out who suits what, and then going back home again?

That was something which bugged me a lot. Unfortunately I think taking out everything you can carry then forming a team as you suggest is the only way to do it

[SqueakyG]

I have STILL not started playing this -- because DA:O is so massive! I have just finished DA:O but I'm amazed by how differently the whole thing can turn out from the landsmeet onwards. I want to move on to other things so I won't play it much more, but I'm reading all about things I didn't get to see in my playthrough. Actually, I will spend a day starting new games with each character type to see their origin section.

Then on to DA2, even though everything I have read about the game explains its inferiority.

Criticism suggests that DA2 needed another year in development. RPG gamers are patient people who would have happily waited. It's only a year and a half since the first game came out - I don't think big RPGs should have such a fast turnaround. Another year in development could have given them time to:

- Build more dungeon maps so they don't repeat as much.

- Build better sidequests instead of so many simple fetches.

- Make Kirkwall much more vibrant and thriving with people, by spending a year optimising/rewriting the game engine (if Assassins Creed can do it, a 2011 game engine has NO EXCUSE not to be able to).

- Spot and fix critical bugs like the Isabella/Sebastian friendship problem.

- Come up with ways to make the time periods feel more different to each other (I would suggest seasons... summer/autumn/winter for Kirkwall?)

I don't know what else, I haven't started it yet. I'm also trying to avoid spoilers.

[smoothe]

You seem to have it down for someone who hasn't played it yet I would happily have waited however long it took to get a game with the breadth and depth of DAO. I really liked the more 'personal' story, that's not what the complaints are about, but it could've so easily been an absolutely great game given that everyone is criticising it in the same ways! One of the major 'what if' of recent times for me.

[JPR]

RPG gamers are patient people who would have happily waited. It's only a year and a half since the first game came out - I don't think big RPGs should have such a fast turnaround.

I think that's part of the problem though, they weren't really going for RPG gamers, those people who'd been waiting years on Origins and where there day 1 etc (not bitter honest. ) Was talk of going for the CoD crowd, needing to make it more about the action and when you press buttons cool things happen. Sadly I don't think there's anything to suggest they'll go back on this for 3, so at the moment it's not something I'm bothered about. Which is a bit of a turnaround after the years of following and waiting on the first.

[Kayin Amoh]

That interview TSH posted is all kinds of amazing. You've got tons of enemies who'll happily throw themselves on top of your sword, but not one will give you the slightest bit of lip for using blood magic beforehand?

I know they're still in the selling phase for DA2 and they'll feel that admitting they could have made a significantly better game could affect sales, but I sincerely hope that they don't actually buy into the nonsense they're saying.

[Retroguy]

That interview TSH posted is all kinds of amazing. You've got tons of enemies who'll happily throw themselves on top of your sword, but not one will give you the slightest bit of lip for using blood magic beforehand?

Surely it would have just been easier to just not have the blood magic skill set available for your mage character?

Ok, so some people might have been annoyed at the lack of that choice, but I think in this case no choice would have been better than a choice which shatters the consistency of the world you're trying to create. There's no point going to all the trouble of producing god knows how many codex entries to flesh it out if such a fundamental issue exists.

Bioware's whole argument for the skill set's inclusion is ludicrous- if you want to include something fun, you make sure it's justified within the game universe/lore. I bet it's not that easy, but hey, that's why they're professional game designers. Some might argue giving Hawke a jetpack would be 'fun', but that doesn't mean you should do it. No doubt if Bioware did this, they wouldn't have the other characters mention a huge shiny metallic device on his back, since Hawke's the hero of Kirkwall, so if he wants a jetpack, he can have a bloody jetpack.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

What is it with bioware and utterly nonsensical moral dichotomies.

[JPR]

Those two are really quite funny to have in your party. Party banter can be great, it certainly provides moments where you have to stop and ask WTF did I just hear.

[Harsin]

The end of this game really is a steaming pile isn't it.

Blaaaaaarrrgggh I'm going to go crazy and suddenly commit evil blood magic with no prior warning and transform into a huge monster and turn on my allies despite the fact that I'm teamed up with the fantasy version of the A-Team who seem to be quite happily handling this battle. Bioware went to the trouble of programming this mediocre boss battle and you'll play it whether you like it or not.

Going by the way that Meredith flips out as well and reveals she's been under the control of her Final Fantasy cosplay sword, I'm guessing you're forced to fight her in a similar manner even if you sided with the Templars.

[df0]

As far as I know Harsin

the bosses remain the same no matter the choices you make. And yes, it is not really thought out. My biggest issue with it was the sense of 'wait, what? so all the choices i made, all the discussions i held, all the parties i sided with, all the people i have pissed off, all the people i have killed result in this?

[Wiper]

Oh, RPS (specifically John) has just lobbed up an article on what went wrong in DA2. I found myself agreeing with everything (bar the complaint about the waves of enemies, which never really bothered me), and it's worth a read. Some snippets:

It would be madness to say that Dragon Age II is a bad game. Such is the lunatic binary nature of people’s responses to games that its having fallen short of its own predecessor, and indeed its own expectations, seems to create a desire to loudly deride it. The iTunes rating system of 1 or 5 seems to be infesting our realm, and it’s important to recognise disappointment in context. Am I disappointed by Dragon Age II? Very much so. Does that mean it’s terrible? Absolutely not...

Playing as a mage, I had the delight of keeping my brother, Carver Hawke, alive. What a pleasure he was to have around, vacuously moaning the entire time. And I’m not sure they’ve written a major character as poorly as your mother, who stands around feebly, and flutters in the background for half the game. She’s such a shell of a character, displaying none of the gumption one might expect from a woman who’d defied the nobility of her family to marry an apostate mage...

The idea is, and I love this idea in concept so much, that you’re not playing as the last hero in the land, saving the universe. You’re just some refugee, trying to survive in a city that has no fondness for Fereldens, working you way up through the ranks from villainy to nobility, seeing the city change shape through time. I wish I could have played that game...

The trouble is, each time the game jumps forward three years, any sense of having connected to anything that’s going on is torn from you. Suddenly you’re not who you were before, with the seemingly interesting bits happening while we were off watching an animated cutscene. Oh, I’ve got my own place now? I’m rich now? Then how come I have the same amount of gold as before, the same equipment, and so on? Oh, I’m the Champion now? That little fight was enough? Really?...

And the city doesn’t change in any interesting way. Sure, the Qunari (the oversees race who seem to be in town to cause some sort of trouble) eventually are gone, so that bit’s closed off, or whatever. But the same people mill in the same places, the same merchants stand at the same stalls, the same buildings stand in the same places. It’s a conceit that the game seems entirely unwilling to deliver on in any imaginative way...

Where BioWare’s wonderful Knights Of The Old Republic offered the illusion of choice, changing the way you behaved in the fixed events, Dragon Age II offers not even an illusion. Do you want to open door A or door B? Both open up into a fight where you kill someone, but door A meant you wanted to. And this, tragically, even applies to the game’s floppy, hapless ending.

I’ve carved out a path through the game – at every junction I’ve chosen to fight for the mages against the Templar, I’ve argued the mages’ cause in every discussion. So why am I being asked whose side I’m on at all?! Let alone why does that make absolutely no difference whatsoever to what I’m actually going to play?...

In the end Dragon Age II has nothing to say about slavery, subjugation, or acculturation – themes that shone in Origins. It pretends it does, but it’s all flap and waffle to excuse some more fights. It has nowhere to go, nothing to reach for.

The plight of the elves, either City or Dalish, is trivialised to a couple of asides, and the dwarven caste system that surely provided Origins’ most controversial elements is completely absent, maybe alluded to in one or two lines. We’re just left with the mages, and it’s offered to us in such a silly way that it doesn’t allow us to think anything interesting. Every blood mage turns into a demon, and yet no one seems to notice. Fighting for them begins to make blurry sense, and yet fighting against aligns you with psychopaths who wish to see horrific acts of mental abuse and eugenics...

Female Hawke is not a very nice person to start with. The decision to voice the player character, and to give them Mass Effect 2’s ambiguous dialogue wheels, was I think a very bad one. I was left with someone who just seemed unnecessarily rude to people, despite my desperately picking the nicest options. But when it came to flirting, Hawke was not exactly subtle.

The conversation options with a heart symbol really would have been better represented by someone shaking a vertical fist over a horizontal arm, shouting, “WUUURRGGGHH!” Hawke’s predatory attempts to convince people to fuck her are so far from any notion of “romance” that they’re only laughable...

And sadly, by the end, I stopped caring altogether. I switched the combat down to “casual” because I was so bored of having the same fight sixty-three times an hour. Without the need for tactics, and with the mindlessly stupid decision to have repeated waves of enemies, once I’d unlocked enough abilities to spam through combat it became an incredibly frequent irritant. And boss fights didn’t ask for any skill whatsoever – they were just long, boring sequences where the only challenge was to see if I culd time my party’s heals such that they stayed alive long enough to watch the baddy finally keel over.

The game then betrayed me in two extraordinary ways. Firstly the biggest plot point in the game – one that changed everything that I’d been working for – happened in a cutscene, caused by one of my companions, and would have happened no matter what actions I’d taken before. It was such a strikingly bad decision, yet again making me feel irrelevant to the action. Sure, it’s great that an NPC can heavily impact the world. But surely I should get to be involved on some level?

And then the fudged ending forcing me to go down the same path whichever major choices I’d made, left me feeling cold. That it ends on a mother-sodding cliffhanger felt par for the course of the frenzy of middle fingers being stuck up at me, and when it didn’t bother to tell me what happened next to any of my companions, I realised I didn’t care.

[JPR]

Was just about to come and post that as well, thought it was excellent and found myself pretty much agreeing with it all.

[Swallow]

I can't complete Aveline or Varric's armour upgrades because the quests for the final pieces of each in Act III are bugged. FFS.

edit: well, not bugged as such for Varric. You just can't get it if you don't import an Awakening save. Luckily, you can get round it by running the exodus debug command from the console but it's a good quest that shouldn't be locked off like that.

Edited March 31, 2011 by Swallow

[Kayin Amoh]

The wave after wave thing doesn't bother me at all. About to read the piece soon, but I gotta run for now.

[Monkeyboy]

Mmm, the Night Terrors quest. Any tips?

I go into the Fade, and can take out the first demon. The second demon, I'm a man down. And then a further man down when another one of my team gets possessed. I took Aveline, Varric, and Fenris into the Fade. In the second fight, Fenris one hit kills me with his big hammer, then one hit kills Varric before I get a chance to gather my thoughts. It doesn't help that there's demons dotted around, plus a massive demon in the middle of the room as well. Is there a certain bunch of characters I should be taking into the Fade to make it easier?

[Lucky Jim]

Mmm, the Night Terrors quest. Any tips?

I go into the Fade, and can take out the first demon. The second demon, I'm a man down. And then a further man down when another one of my team gets possessed. I took Aveline, Varric, and Fenris into the Fade. In the second fight, Fenris one hit kills me with his big hammer, then one hit kills Varric before I get a chance to gather my thoughts. It doesn't help that there's demons dotted around, plus a massive demon in the middle of the room as well. Is there a certain bunch of characters I should be taking into the Fade to make it easier?

Before you enter the room, create a tactic for fenris to make him wait (disable all other tactics). He won't move so you can pick him off when you like...

[StephenM]

Guys, I need your hive mind clarity!

Loved Dragon Age, love Mass Effect, been following this thread where people seem to be whining about the sequel. Enjoyed the demo but, you know, it was okay. Not mind blowing - I put it down to the game requiring a bit more time for character investment and development of skills etc.

But it's a simple question, for those of you that have it - is it worth getting?

I can't tell if the criticisms are just 'it could have been so much better' or if they're 'wow, they actively ruined dragon age and stole my hard earned cash'

[Swallow]

Wait 'til it's cheap. It's a good game in many ways but a bafflingly poor one in the ways that stick with you, the ending in particular.

[JPR]

An update on the upcoming patch, more of a yes we're still working on it than anything. Not much on when it will arrive but do say it's going in for certification, which I think usually takes a few weeks doesn't it? No confirmation on what it will fix other than there's over 100 fixes and auto-attack implementation is confirmed for the consoles.

[Monkeyboy]

Before you enter the room, create a tactic for fenris to make him wait (disable all other tactics). He won't move so you can pick him off when you like...

That's genius. Worked a treat. The fight was done and dusted in 10 seconds.

[Monkeyboy]

What?? Hawke's mother...

HUGE SPOILER

Just got killed by a serial killer mage? It was kinda bonkers. And to be honest, my LOLing ruined what I'm sure was meant to be a pretty emotional scene after the fight had finished.

[StephenM]

Traded in, so got it for 7 quid. Would have to be pretty godawful to annoy me now.

Pre owned copy so no bonus dlc - is it worth getting? Black emporium, or whatever it's called.

[Ferine]

What?? Hawke's mother...

HUGE SPOILER

Just got killed by a serial killer mage? It was kinda bonkers. And to be honest, my LOLing ruined what I'm sure was meant to be a pretty emotional scene after the fight had finished.

It baffles me why they had you speak to her after the fight. That pushed the entire situation into being utterly ridiculous for me, whereas if things had been handled differently it might have bordered on affecting.

[Monkeyboy]

It baffles me why they had you speak to her after the fight. That pushed the entire situation into being utterly ridiculous for me, whereas if things had been handled differently it might have bordered on affecting.

Another thing...

A problem with RPGs is that there can be so much to do, pacing issues sometimes arise, which I think is where this quest went a bit wrong. I believe that evil mage guy was brought up in another, earlier quest? I'd pumped a lot of game hours after that into other various plot lines, such is the nature of the RPG, and had almost forgotten about him, so Hawke's mother's death felt like it came out of nowhere. It was all too sudden. I found it hard to take seriously, a real "So what?" kind of moment, which I'm sure Bioware didn't intend.

The connection with Hawke's mother sort of peters out over the course of the game as well. She never does much apart from stand around in the house, wittering about nothing.

[SteveH]

So then..Arishok :/

I'm playing as a Rogue and he is kicking my ass in the duel. I keep running around, taking a tiny bit off his health - rinse and repeat and then he seems to heal every so often. I sat for over 30 minutes running around like fucking Benny Hill and barely took a third of his health. I had to go out and so needed to switch my xbox off. Pissing me off no end as other than sit for maybe an hour and a half, and hope the fucker doesn't do that shitty pole attack thing

any tips please? Cheers