What there is evidence for is that an 82 is a dismal score by the current scoring standards for professional critics. Go find the games you hated the most and look what score they got. For the most part a game has to be nearly unplayable to get a score less then 80.What, a distinct minority that Dragon Age II wasn't a disaster? That it didn't deserve a user rating of 4.2? Last I checked, professional critics rated it at a solid 82 average.
Fortunately for me, despite being a huge fan of DA:O I was able to hold off on a day one purchase for the sequel. That allowed me to be influenced by the negative user reviews which made me decide to skip DA2 rather than ruin the series for me. I'm hyped for #3, and am confident they will get it right this time.
On a related note, I avoided Mass Effect 3, despite loving ME2 for the same reasons, as well as Diablo 3 despite being a huge D2 fan. Ever since the abominations that were Matrix Realoaded and Revolutions, I've been pretty good at avoiding bad sequels to great releases, whether they be games, movies, books or whatever.
Maybe, except
a) It only just announced almost 2 years after Dragon age 2, twice as long as it took to even make Dragon Age 2
b) Has an estimated release of at the very least 2014, a full 3 years after Dragon age 2.
and
c) Therefore Dragon Age 3 have almost 5 entire years of development time, which is a far cry better than DA2's development time of only 1 year. There's a reason DA2 sucked. You can't make a quality AAA-RPG in only 1 year.
That, combined with a brand new engine, veteran team working on it, and Bioware acknowledging complaints of Dragon age 2, I think there's reason enough to get your hopes up for 3.
What there is evidence for is that an 82 is a dismal score by the current scoring standards for professional critics. Go find the games you hated the most and look what score they got. For the most part a game has to be nearly unplayable to get a score less then 80.
What there is evidence for is that an 82 is a dismal score by the current scoring standards for professional critics. Go find the games you hated the most and look what score they got. For the most part a game has to be nearly unplayable to get a score less then 80.
DNF had 15 years of development, it was a load of cack. More development time = good game theory goes out the window
You're missing out on a great game. ME3 is awesome. The ending as it was originally was horrid, however, with the DLC and expanding on it, which is free, the series ended much better.
Bitching about the ending has been put to bed by the expanded ending in my opinion and I was one of the harshest critics of the original ending. So they fixed it, but it should have released that way. I'm hoping the backlash against the original ending and DA2 will propel them to treat their fans a little better.
No, the Extended Cut ending did not improve the ending in any meaningful sense. It still sucked, you still got to choose colored explosions.
Thanks to the crappy ending and the equally crappy extended cut ending, the Mass Effect Trilogy won't be remembered for anything else.
At least, until EA runs it into the ground with Mass Effect 4 through 20.
Oh, if your game design is horrid on a fundamental level then more time won't help. What I'm saying is that Dragon Age II was not horrid on a fundamental level and had a bunch of good stuff going for it. It's plain to see that it did have a rushed development cycle, which undoubtedly caused hard to the end product's quality. More time would have avoided those specific problems.
You're missing out on a great game. ME3 is awesome. The ending as it was originally was horrid, however, with the DLC and expanding on it, which is free, the series ended much better.
Bitching about the ending has been put to bed by the expanded ending in my opinion and I was one of the harshest critics of the original ending. So they fixed it, but it should have released that way. I'm hoping the backlash against the original ending and DA2 will propel them to treat their fans a little better.
That's a bad statement to make, I think. Many of the complaints such as only controlling one race, not having items for your party (a change I liked, actually) annoying characters, a poorly done black and white mages or templars story being...lacking at best...these would not have been fixed by time. They are problems at a fundamental level that exhibit the shift in Bioware games under EA's management...which is simply, "make games for the kids with ADD who won't buy the game unless you're beheading someone every 30 seconds."
I disagree. The problems still exist. The entire trilogy still take a turn for the worse, and ME1 evolved into little more than a glorified 3rd person cover based shooter.There's still a reaper off switch like everyone predicted. The game still has the awful tie in with the online galaxy readiness stuff. Bioware has pretty much made it clear they think "green" is the good ending, iirc. And you still have the people in denial saying "it was all a dream, as the reapers attempted to indoctrinate shep." The ME3 ending still brings little closure, previous choices still have little to no effect on the ending and the three endings are barely more creative than the endings of Deus Ex (the original.)
How does the extended cut not give closure? That was what the extended cut addressed the best, I thought. :hmm:
It gives you no closure what happened to any of your team members, galaxy is still virtually ruined, all previous decisions are irrelevant, and you still choose between Red, Blue, and Green lights.
What, that Dragon Age II was not horrid on a fundamental level? That's my opinion and I've sticking with it. The story is just as complex as anything from the first game, if a bit shorter (which I again attribute to a rushed development cycle). Certainly not for "kids with ADD".
How does the extended cut not give closure? That was what the extended cut addressed the best, I thought. :hmm:
"Green" is technically not the best ending, in that it's the hardest to achieve.Past that, regardless of what BioWare orThe hardest thing is to get the Destroy ending with Shepard taking a breath at the end, which BioWare confirmed to mean that Shepard survived.thinks was the best option, you're still free to choose from those options.the Catalyst
By "galactic readiness", do you mean the multiplayer? I actually thought multiplayer was pretty fun, and I have a bunch of friends who play it. In my opinion the "galactic readiness" meter was a neat way to make the multiplayer meaningful and not something just tacked on and separate from the single player. There were legitimate complaints that it was hard to attain the "best ending" without playing multiplayer, which is an issue for people without a stable connection for gaming (though people who just don't want to play multiplayer are unjustified in their complaints IMO). This was fixed in the extended cut by reducing the EMS score required to get the "best ending".
It gives you no closure what happened to any of your team members, galaxy is still virtually ruined, all previous decisions are irrelevant, and you still choose between Red, Blue, and Green lights.
Agreed. And this is kinda my point.
Sure it is. They redid the animations to make it feel like everything had more impact. Instead of pulling enemies, they spawned in waves, there was no real reason to pause the game and do some great strategy for how to pull enemies. I remember in DAO winning a large fight with only Morrigan and some interesting planning. In no way did DA2 have that. Overall, the story boiled down to "which is the least annoying, corrupt templars, or mages that are in fact turning into abominations?" The choice I wanted at the end was "take a flamethrower to this place!" (said in an Al Pacino voice.) It was a far more linear game in which choices made no difference beyond who stayed in your group.
Oh, and thinking of the people and who would stay...how the hell do you get into a "rivalry" with someone that disagrees with EVERYTHING you say...and then stay loyal? If someone insulted me at every turn and put down everything I believed in, I wouldn't go "gee, I'm super loyal to you now, but only because you hate me so much. If you hated me a little less, I wouldn't be loyal." Which is what the DA2 system is.
I can keep going, but DA2 was a dumbed down game, with a really stupid plot. DAO had a proper enemy. A final goal. Clear progression. In the end, you felt like you beat something. In the end of DA2, the feeling was "well, that sucked" - and not because the ending was awful (it was) but because the game added up to little more than a graphical improvement over DAO. Oh, and your character got a voice.
Ugh, I need to put everything behind the spoiler tag.
Who created the reapers? What the eff possed them? Who is this star child? What were the dreams? How did the catalyst know to take the kid's form? Did the kid even exist? IIRC, the game makes you wonder if the kid was real, when he's in the shaft at the beginning. What did the choice at the end of ME2 have to do with ME3? Was ME2 just a wasted period of time? This is the end of a massive story arch, but what happens to the asari? What about the Turians? What about the smaller races that the game pretty much ignored? What about the people at SOL now stranded since the relays are toast?
But are you? There will be future games. If they make a game that comes after ME3, they will pick one ending and run with it. And I believe they stated it was green. Which is stupid - the entire series is about defeating the reapers, but somehow the ending which is explicitly "don't destroy them" is the best? The heck bioware...
Really? Some people aren't interested in multiplayer. That you basically had to use it - and it goes back down over time - to get the best ending is just stupid. I honestly don't know who though it was a good idea. This isn't about the merits of the multiplayer, it's about how the tied it into the game.
Yeah, I'm thinking you guys railing against the ME3 ending didn't actually watch or play through the ME3 extended endings. There's a good deal of closure and plot hole fixing.
I thought the ending was bad. Expanding upon it does not change that, it's still a poor ending. Though I am of the opinion that ME1 > ME2 > ME3, so I was kinda expecting a poor ending.
It seems most people that liked DAO did not like DA2, and vice versa. They are two different types of games. One is pre-EA Bioware, the other is post-EA Bioware. This is not at all surprising. Those who enjoyed DA2 and ME3 I say good for you, you've got more of the same coming.
While I think ME3 actaully was a small step above ME2 the pre-/post-EA is quite evident. KOTOR is another example - they just don't make games like that anymore. :|I thought the ending was bad. Expanding upon it does not change that, it's still a poor ending. Though I am of the opinion that ME1 > ME2 > ME3, so I was kinda expecting a poor ending.
It seems most people that liked DAO did not like DA2, and vice versa. They are two different types of games. One is pre-EA Bioware, the other is post-EA Bioware. This is not at all surprising. Those who enjoyed DA2 and ME3 I say good for you, you've got more of the same coming.
As I said to Bateluer, the extended cut changes things so the mass relays no longer blow up. No one's stranded.
From what I remember, they're still totally disabled. Intact, but non-functional. So people are stranded, instead of systems being blown up.
We see the rings of the Sol relay fling apart, suggesting it might be disabled, but whatever damage it has is shown to be reparable in the epilogue slides. The Catalyst's line about "releasing the energy of the Crucible will destroy the mass relays" is removed, so there's no reason to think that the same thing happened to every relay. Overall, the point of the change was, I think, to show that everyone is indeed not stranded. In the epilogue slides we see things like Wrex back on Tuchanka, Tali back on Rannoch, etc.
What's the current wisdom on DA 3 release date? God, I replayed DA2 and while it's not quite apocalyptic, I also replayed DA:O immediately before and DA2 is much worse than I remember...I especially noticed the reuse of identical areas...