Dragon Age 2!

[frozentundra123456]

As I said, I liked Elder Scroll IV better than DAO. I wish I could like Morrowind. I have tried to play it several times and just cant get into it. Maybe it is too open world for me. I just get lost/confused about what to do, where to go and quit. Must be my problem, as most people seem to say it is great.

 

[nageov3t]

As I said, I liked Elder Scroll IV better than DAO. I wish I could like Morrowind. I have tried to play it several times and just cant get into it. Maybe it is too open world for me. I just get lost/confused about what to do, where to go and quit. Must be my problem, as most people seem to say it is great.

that was kinda my exact experience with Morrowind... I got off the boat, didn't know wtf to do, wandered around for a bit, died, and was like "eh... fuck this." and uninstalled it.

Oblivion was a bit better, but I just have generic hang-ups about gameplay in just about every first-person game.

both of them to me feel exactly like MMORPG's except without anyone else playing, whereas DA:O felt like a traditional single-player RPG.

 

[TheFlyingSquirrel]

As I said, I liked Elder Scroll IV better than DAO. I wish I could like Morrowind. I have tried to play it several times and just cant get into it. Maybe it is too open world for me. I just get lost/confused about what to do, where to go and quit. Must be my problem, as most people seem to say it is great.

I actually liked that better about Morrowind
you had to find what you had to do and it had a more interesting setting. I thought Oblivion was too easy

 

[zinfamous]

By your logic, why don't we just replace all dialog options with three, single word choices then? Paragon, Renegade, Neutral. Makes things simple enough.




Morrowind was alright, but I'm not a big fan of Bethesda's style, I usually get bored long before I even start the main plot. Bioware's linear, well told stories are among the best out there, even if they're getting very combat heavy in recent years.

I am curious though, if you thought the graphics in DAO were bad, if you tried any of the enhancement mods? Since most modern RPGs are basically console ports, they really benefit from community enhancement patches to get them up to code. A slap against the developers to be certain though.

I fall asleep before I ever get to a main plot in those Morrowind games. Between the wide-open wandering of all corners of the map, back and forth, completing piles upon piles of mundane and reward-less quests, and trying to figure out how to distribute points into the 50 or so stat categories.

fuck the hell out of that.

I simply don't have time for those ultra D&D games. I do like to go outside, you know (sometimes :sneaky

 

[zinfamous]

Yea except, DAO isn't "on-rails", it allows you to do a number of things in any order you please. Which, while not being fully open world, certainly removes it from the "on-rails" linear claim. It's not like it's Final Fantasy or Resident Evil or some game that is truely LINEAR. It's just that the plot does have some structure, which is a necessity if you want a plot with any sort of depth at all.

The whole "It's 2010 so I can't play a game unless it has xyz big budget bullshit" is one of the things that is wrong with gaming as a whole. I won't play this unless every little shit stain is voiced, despite the fact that voicing every character in Oblivion made my goddamn ears bleed. I won't play it unless the entire world has been visualized seamlessly, even if that makes it look like ass and the world is 90% boring forest with dungeons that aren't even memorable. I won't play it unless your animators and coders spend weeks developing a dodge and hit detection system not even rivaled by an FPS, because that's the only way I can believe I missed the monster.

Arkaign's complaint that I agree with, I think, is DAO's map. going from place to place with the little blood trail. That seems rather tacky.

Yes, it would be huge and possibly a bitch to develop (or not, I have no idea how this stuff works), but why not make trails that connect these places that you have to follow to unlock the towns, then you can map travel any time after if you wish? (click on map, click on town on the other side of world, Boom! reload in next town).

pretty much what they do in Guild Wars...

 

[Dorkenstein]

I fall asleep before I ever get to a main plot in those Morrowind games. Between the wide-open wandering of all corners of the map, back and forth, completing piles upon piles of mundane and reward-less quests, and trying to figure out how to distribute points into the 50 or so stat categories.

fuck the hell out of that.

I simply don't have time for those ultra D&D games. I do like to go outside, you know (sometimes :sneaky

To me, those crappy features you mention are all part of an rpg. Or they were, anyway. Though the only RPGs I can think of with absurd amounts of stat categories would be the German series called Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye). Certainly not mainstream hits.

I like to go outside too, and I can still play stupidly complex games. It all comes down to knowing when to play a game and when to let your food burn on the stove and letting your dog pee on the floor. Priorities.

 

[Dumac]

"Yes, one of the big changes for Dragon Age 2 is that the combat has been revamped (or stripped back, depending on how you look at it) -- turning it into a much more hack-n-slash type of game when playing as a Knight. This is all done through a closer third-person perspective than the first game; think Ninja Gaiden, and how you hacked through dozens of enemies, blood spilling everywhere -- now replace ninjas with darkspawn, and you have the basic idea behind DA2."

Yaaay...because WRPGS are way to complicated....

:/

 

[bullbert]

...snip...
It all comes down to knowing when to play a game and when to let your food burn on the stove and letting your dog pee on the floor. Priorities.

Excellent! :thumbsup:

 

[Bateluer]

Remember my sarcastic comment about basically making only only 3 dialog choices and having them be Good, Evil, Neutral?

Yeah, that's basically what they're doing. I can't link the article because I'm at work, but there's a link on Firingsquad's news links. Basically, there's 3 dialog options, all labeled with symbols for Good, Nasty, and Jackass. The more we learn about DA2, the less likely I'm inclined to buy it.

 

[Dorkenstein]

That sounds even more like hand holding than Mass Effect 2 by a wide margin. Where did the Ninja Gaiden comparison comment come from? The last I heard, PC was the only platform to keep the "strategic" combat mode and the console versions got stupefied.

Bioware team members must have most of their forum followers set to block. They can't be listening. Or if they are listening they are completely misconstruing what they get for feedback. Now we just need to know if Greg Zeschuk was calling the quasi-improved engine for DA2 "super hot" because it makes your power supply explode. I'd still like to think its the blood-sucking ghouls at EA pulling all these strings, but it's looking less likely to be the case and more likely that my favorite dev house is changing for the worse.

 

[waggy]

i got DAO and the expansion. i will pass on DA2. why? i got the game and then had to buy a bunch of little DLC. ok not great most were not worth the download. then the expansion comes out. WTF no wonder they had so much DLC they took i tout of the expansion.

that left a sour taste. i got screwed and don't like it.

 

[s44]

Remember my sarcastic comment about basically making only only 3 dialog choices and having them be Good, Evil, Neutral?

Yeah, that's basically what they're doing. I can't link the article because I'm at work, but there's a link on Firingsquad's news links. Basically, there's 3 dialog options, all labeled with symbols for Good, Nasty, and Jackass. The more we learn about DA2, the less likely I'm inclined to buy it.

Completely wrong. (You should have been able to tell by the bit where the author calls darkspawn "orcs" or "imps or goblins or demons".) In fact, everything in the article is wrong.

Check dev posts before panicking.

edit: Note that all the Comic Con previews are based on the 360 version, which is what Bio is demoing there (perhaps because it's the most altered). The PC version is confirmed to retain the tactical view, etc. Sucks if you want an old-school experience on console, but this is the PC forum.

 

[s44]

i got DAO and the expansion. i will pass on DA2. why? i got the game and then had to buy a bunch of little DLC. ok not great most were not worth the download. then the expansion comes out. WTF no wonder they had so much DLC they took i tout of the expansion.

that left a sour taste. i got screwed and don't like it.

Bio used to make expansions like they made games: big, meaty, and a good deal.

Putting them under the "post-release content" umbrella with DLC has turned Bio expansions into DLC -- overpriced and half-baked.

But that really has no bearing on DA2, which is again produced and priced as an actual game release.

 

[Bateluer]

Completely wrong. (You should have been able to tell by the bit where the author calls darkspawn "orcs" or "imps or goblins or demons".) In fact, everything in the article is wrong.

Check dev posts before panicking.

edit: Note that all the Comic Con previews are based on the 360 version, which is what Bio is demoing there (perhaps because it's the most altered). The PC version is confirmed to retain the tactical view, etc. Sucks if you want an old-school experience on console, but this is the PC forum.

http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/110/1108057p1.html

So only the 360 version this time gets dumbed down to oblivion. DA3 will extend that to the PC.

 

[s44]

Yes, that's the piece that's been specifically refuted by the developers.

 

[Dumac]

http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/110/1108057p1.html

So only the 360 version this time gets dumbed down to oblivion. DA3 will extend that to the PC.

Its already leaked to the PC version this time with lees depth, customizability, dialog wheels, etc...

Feels bad man

 

[zinfamous]

It all comes down to knowing when to play a game and when to let your food burn on the stove and letting your dog pee on the floor. Priorities.

in extreme cases, but that isn't a problem that I have. The times that I can play anything are limited, and usually late at night. Only short periods at a time, as well. I hate spending that time running back and forth and doing nothing, fiddling with ridiculous amounts of points that amount to nothing, all the while taking weeks to progress anywhere.

There is a lot to be said for efficiently designing these systems to streamline the stats and categories to the most salient features, such that the micromanagement doesn't detract from actual story--which really is the most important part of an rpg. I love character development and customization, but it can get unnecessarily complicated way too easily. Such things detract from gameplay, imo--and often amount to being a cheap way to add false length to a game that is really thin of content.