Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I can't remember or find where this was being discussed before so here we go.

Allow me to reveal that I hated everything about Dragon Age: Origins. It was an awful game. I gave it chance after chance and wound up disappointed every time. I'm not a person who refuses to hear others' perspectives or is close-minded about what games are worthwhile. But DA:O frustrated the everloving gak out of me and is in my opinion a stain on the already dubious reputation of BioWare.

Now that you know how I really feel about DA:O, it may not surprise you to hear that I thought DA2 was a huge improvement. It was actually fun, in terms of leveling and gameplay. Although the characters were by no means complex or even very interesting, they were good enough to help flesh out the world of . . . er, whatever it's called. Thedas, I think. Graphically, the game was lightyears beyond DA:O, which brings it to "not impressive." But hey, at least it looked like something from this generation. Whatever, it was serviceable and in light of the gameplay streamlining, I'm not going to complain. (Any further. Ahem.) I also realized, in taking a second look at ME2, that BioWare games do not have customizable lead characters. Like Shepherd, Hawk is Hawk is Hawk is Hawk. Even more than in ME, it doesn't matter what s/he looks like or even says -- it's the same character no matter what. But frankly, Hawk was likable enough and some of his conversation choices were even funny. (Other were downright awkward, however.)

That does bring me around to the problem area. The story. Ugh. The story is the big selling point of a BioWare game, or at least it had been before DA2 and, to a lesser extent, ME2. I remember the big tagline of KotOR being that your choices mattered. Well, they don't anymore. Every choice you have to make is ultimately irrelevant as the plotline is totally inevitable. And the choices are all unfulfilling. The game makes you choose sides but renders the sides totally equivocal. I ended the game feeling utterly disappointed that all my efforts had come to nothing. The romance, of course, was just tacked on -- even by ME standards.

I'm glad I played this game and I'm glad that I finished it. I don't regret buying it at release, either. It was a fun couple of weeks and is undemanding enough that you can chill out with it rather than getting totally sucked in. I'm glad BioWare is getting better with gameplay but it's sad to see the stories becoming less and less coherent and your choices as a player becoming completely superficial. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoyed ME2 but isn't a SciFi-only sort of gamer.

Score out of 5?

Score out of five: read the damn review.

It's a difficult one to score on that scale. The story really let me down but I don't want to overstate that since the game at least entertained me. If I have to put a number on it, then it has to be 3.5 of 5.

M, have you played it yet?

Manchu wrote:It's a difficult one to score on that scale. The story really let me down but I don't want to overstate that since the game at least entertained me. If I have to put a number on it, then it has to be 3.5 of 5.

M, have you played it yet?

See, wasn't that hard. I'll get around to playing it one of these days but its not a priority for me.

Manchu wrote:It's a difficult one to score on that scale. The story really let me down but I don't want to overstate that since the game at least entertained me. If I have to put a number on it, then it has to be 3.5 of 5.

M, have you played it yet?

Sadly no :( I haven't had any money for more purchases since I got Homefront. Mind you, with Homefront, MNC, Retribution, and MnB Warband I've had plenty of things to keep me amused.

Melissia wrote:

Manchu wrote:It's a difficult one to score on that scale. The story really let me down but I don't want to overstate that since the game at least entertained me. If I have to put a number on it, then it has to be 3.5 of 5.

M, have you played it yet?

Sadly no :( I haven't had any money for more purchases since I got Homefront. Mind you, with Homefront, MNC, Retribution, and MnB Warband I've had plenty of things to keep me amused.

It's got the non-heteronormative fun you clamour for.

Yeah, I know. And I fully support Bioware's position on the topic. (read David Gaider's post).

INCOMING! A very tl;dr opinion I have on the DA series. Hopefully we can get a good discussion out of it rather than me just soap-boxing :p

The whole "everyone is bisexual!" thing felt very shoe-horned in. It's like they decided to make everyone bisexual (or Hawke-sexual?) to fill a quota. Much like how we get a token black character to artifically diversify. I feel like when you're writing a character you flesh out all the details from the superfluous like hair colour to big ones like sexuality, and I find it very hard to believe that the writers envisioned every character as a bisexual when they first began to create them.

I think characters end up far better when written naturally rather than having a cookbook recipe that calls for 3 lesbians, 4 blacks, 1 dwarf, and 2 elves, and so on in order to diversify.

Anyway enough on that issuse. Like Manchu, I too wasn't greatly impressed with Origins, though I didn't despise it, and so I think DA2 is a great improvment. I actually want to continue playing the game because the combat is actually fun, and combat is the driving force behind any game. If fighting is no fun it doesn't matter how engaing the story is because you'll never see its conclusion if getting there is a drag.

Then DA2 had a lot of minor tweaks that overall helped out like animations and presentation. It did however lack in the area of optimization but that's fairly minor. Gamers seem to exaggerate on the topic of glitches (or maybe I'm lucky and never run into bugs). As for the story, story isn't a big deal to me in games, though I appreciated the more political and personal angle in DA2, it's really just different not worse.

I think the two areas that Origins did better in than DA2 are the characters (in a certain fashion) and the impact of your choices. I think the basic skeletons and archetypes for the characters in DA2 are far better than in Origins (I love the relationships in Hawke's family, especially Carver), but they don't seem to talk as much or fit into the story as well. I wish they had more meaningful interactions, because at the core the characters are better than Origin's but not as fleshed out.

As for Hawke's own plot relevance, to put it simply your choices don't matter too much but hearing everything voiced is a huge improvment, and the dynamic personality you grow is hella cool.

One way to sum up the series is that Origins took a cliche, kinda boring, uninspired idea, and executed it very well. DA2 is more ambitious in what it sets out to do but doesn't execute it as well. In other words DA2 has better loot (no more pallette swaps everywhere!), a more interesting setting (yeah it's one city, but Kirkwall is 100x more interesting than Hamlet #1 and Hamlet # 2 that we saw in Origins), the graphics, animations and character growth are all better, and a few more welcome changes. And yet, despite its superior design choices all of its features don't fit together as nicely as Orgins did.

Overall I'd give DA:O an 8/10 and DA2 an 8.5/10

Interesting take, Asimo. I very much agree that Kirkwall was better than the various bumps-on-logs presented in DA:O but I was disappointed to see that every mansion in hightown was the same mansion with different doors being impassibly locked -- and the same was true for warehouses at the docks -- and caves on Sundermount -- and so on and so forth. This is another disappointing trend I've noticed since DA:O (including ME2): namely, after blowing me away in ME1, BioWare seems to have forgotten how to do level design . . . or really, and more basically, visual design at large.

Agree with your other thoughts, mostly. To fully appreciate just how incredible an improvement in gameplay DA2 represents, you have to understand that everything else about the game is mediocre to disappointing and it still ends up earning a pretty good review. But the magazine reviews out there are truly preposterous.

KC and M have it right: looking forward to it . . . when they get around to it.

Yeah the repeat in interior level design was like a ME1 throwback, it would have been cool if they had a little more variety there like ME2. I'm suprised you dislike ME2's level design. TBH I think ME2 might be Bioware's best game to date, but that's a different topic.

"To fully appreciate just how incredible an improvement in gameplay DA2 represents, you have to understand that everything else about the game is mediocre to disappointing and it still ends up earning a pretty good review. But the magazine reviews out there are truly preposterous."

Good point there, though mediocre to disappointing seems a bit harsh IMO. By preposterous do you mean the silly people giving it 6's, 5's, and sometimes 2's? Personally I think a flat 7.0 is the lowest you can give this game without looking like a ridiculous, whiny complainer. Speaking of which, so many annoying, whiny, people harping on this game on other forums.

Man, in general gamers are some of the worst people, impossible to please they are.

I actually think a 6 is pretty reasonable for a DA2 rating (EDIT: Accounting for 4 point phenom with that one). 2 is a bit exaggerated. It's not like DA2 is unplayable.

I'd give DA2 a 6.5, but I actually liked DA:O and thought it was one of the best RPG's in years XD

I will provide a dissenting opinion and say that I actually like the DA2 story. I understood from the beginning that, no matter what, Hawke was going to be the Champion of Kirkwall. This left no doubt in my mind that the end game would be essentially the same regardless of my choices. Rather, as in DA:O (and all other Bioware games save, oddly, ME2), the details were what would matter.

That being said, I didn't like the absence of emphasis on tactical combat. It reminded me too much of ME2 (which I consider to be, basically, a bad shooter in terms of combat) even with the ability to queue up combat from an abstract perspective (the weak sort of inventory system also feeds into this). However, the way they adjusted the classes, especially the mage, for interactive combat was masterful.

In all, I would give the game an 8/10 (I would also give DA:O and 8/10). I feel like they corrected some of the mistakes made in DA:O, but made some new ones (too much action in combat, bad inventory system a la ME2) in the course of doing so.

The voice acting was a massive improvement, however. Though I do understand the prohibitive cost of recording 14 sets of dialogue in the first game (7 origins x 2 genders).

Edit: I also have no problem with the constant attraction to Hawke. The characters in the game are meant to respond to the player as though he/she were the story, because that's explicitly what he/she is. Its about options, not any special Hawke sex magnetism.

dogma wrote:I will provide a dissenting opinion and say that I actually like the DA2 story. I understood from the beginning that, no matter what, Hawke was going to be the Champion of Kirkwall. This left no doubt in my mind that the end game would be essentially the same regardless of my choices. Rather, as in DA:O (and all other Bioware games save, oddly, ME2), the details were what would matter.

That being said, I didn't like the absence of emphasis on tactical combat. It reminded me too much of ME2 (which I consider to be, basically, a bad shooter in terms of combat) even with the ability to queue up combat from an abstract perspective (the weak sort of inventory system also feeds into this). However, the way they adjusted the classes, especially the mage, for interactive combat was masterful.

In all, I would give the game an 8/10 (I would also give DA:O and 8/10). I feel like they corrected some of the mistakes made in DA:O, but made some new ones (too much action in combat, bad inventory system a la ME2) in the course of doing so.

The voice acting was a massive improvement, however. Though I do understand the prohibitive cost of recording 14 sets of dialogue in the first game (7 origins x 2 genders).

Edit: I also have no problem with the constant attraction to Hawke. The characters in the game are meant to respond to the player as though he/she were the story, because that's explicitly what he/she is. Its about options, not any special Hawke sex magnetism.

Dogma's hit the nail on the head for me. Essentially my thoughts too with some very minor differences. Good game, an equal of DA:O as it fixed some problems of that but made new ones too.

dogma wrote:I will provide a dissenting opinion and say that I actually like the DA2 story. I understood from the beginning that, no matter what, Hawke was going to be the Champion of Kirkwall. This left no doubt in my mind that the end game would be essentially the same regardless of my choices. Rather, as in DA:O (and all other Bioware games save, oddly, ME2), the details were what would matter.

That being said, I didn't like the absence of emphasis on tactical combat. It reminded me too much of ME2 (which I consider to be, basically, a bad shooter in terms of combat) even with the ability to queue up combat from an abstract perspective (the weak sort of inventory system also feeds into this). However, the way they adjusted the classes, especially the mage, for interactive combat was masterful.

In all, I would give the game an 8/10 (I would also give DA:O and 8/10). I feel like they corrected some of the mistakes made in DA:O, but made some new ones (too much action in combat, bad inventory system a la ME2) in the course of doing so.

The voice acting was a massive improvement, however. Though I do understand the prohibitive cost of recording 14 sets of dialogue in the first game (7 origins x 2 genders).

Edit: I also have no problem with the constant attraction to Hawke. The characters in the game are meant to respond to the player as though he/she were the story, because that's explicitly what he/she is. Its about options, not any special Hawke sex magnetism.

I'm actually posting this coming from a DA2 crash Anyway, most of what you said is pretty much spot on. However the combat is just as tactical, just faster and more exciting. People seem to have this idea that slow means tactical but I don't think that's the case. As for weak inventory system, I think it's an improvement. Loot usually just comes down to math and putting on the thing with the highest numbers. In DA:O and ME1 this meant you ended up with everyone looking the same with maybe a few colour changes. Now each party member has a unique appearance which I find far more enjoyable than having the same guy with a different head cut and pasted on like DA:O. Voice acting is also better but lady Hawke still annoys me a bit :/

As for the part on sexuality, that means they are altering the character to suit Hawke. You could say they are messing with the integrity of the character's design. Shouldn't sexuality be tied intrinsically to the character and not some kind of trigger that gets activated based on the PC? I feel like they designed each character fully then flipped the "bisexual switch" on each of them to get them ready to ship off into the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

LordofHats wrote:I actually think a 6 is pretty reasonable for a DA2 rating (EDIT: Accounting for 4 point phenom with that one). 2 is a bit exaggerated. It's not like DA2 is unplayable.

I'd give DA2 a 6.5, but I actually liked DA:O and thought it was one of the best RPG's in years XD

Really? Those scores seem rather low, especially considering how the scale works in VG ratings. Less than 7 usually means trash unless you're a huge fan of the series/genre. I think the DA's have enough polish to garner at least a 7, most people outside of the Bioware and RPG circle can enjoy them.

Also to move this topic slightly away from depressing complaints and problems with the games, who are your guys' fave characters? It's Carver for me fo sho.

asimo77 wrote: However the combat is just as tactical, just faster and more exciting. People seem to have this idea that slow means tactical but I don't think that's the case.

I suppose I should elaborate on that a bit. I felt very constricted by the possible builds of the NPCs in DA2, especially vis a vis their equipment tuning. Additionally, while I like the idea that all classes have constant use, I also feel like that DA2 runs into the same problem as WoW; ie. when all classes are viable all the time, all classes tend to be the same.

DA2 had tactical combat in the sense that one could optimize, but not tactical combat in the sense that one could fail horribly; though that is an admittedly (possibly impossible) difficult balance to strike.

asimo77 wrote:
As for weak inventory system, I think it's an improvement. Loot usually just comes down to math and putting on the thing with the highest numbers. In DA:O and ME1 this meant you ended up with everyone looking the same with maybe a few colour changes.

You can have variable loot without similarity, especially in a single player RPG. All you need to do is complete a separate model for every armor set type that can be worn by all given characters (ie. no model for plate mages wearing plate). Time consuming? Sure! But also a sign of great care in making a game, and cheaper than 14 voice actors.

asimo77 wrote:
As for the part on sexuality, that means they are altering the character to suit Hawke. You could say they are messing with the integrity of the character's design. Shouldn't sexuality be tied intrinsically to the character and not some kind of trigger that gets activated based on the PC? I feel like they designed each character fully then flipped the "bisexual switch" on each of them to get them ready to ship off into the game.

Not everyone wears sexuality on their sleeve. Despite what certain petitions mentioned by PA (too lazy to link) have to say, there are people that wear their hetero/homo-sexuality as though it were a coat, and there are people that wear it like a misspelled "Mom" tattoo. Whether or not that sexuality is directed towards men or women, in a world that makes no mention of preference for either (making the "gay stereotypes" noise even more puerile), shouldn't matter at all.

I will admit I'm still not completely understanding your point on the tactical part, also having not played WoW might be an issue. I felt like I had more freedom in building a character, because the talent trees weren't as linear and they dropped the attribute requirments.

I'm playing on Nightmare, and I'm not trying to make a power build, really just picking cool abilities with a theme, but the talents are balanced enough that I still have a chance.

I agree whole-heartedly on your loot point. But given the resources that it takes and recent patterns in gaming, looking cool with variety doesn't seem to be happening. Though I prefer one unique look to a lot of bland outfits with number crunching. Btw a great loot system would be Sacred 2's. Tons of visual and stat variety.

Firstly what's the PA? Anyway what I meant is that it seemed like the characters were specifically altering their sexuality to suit whatever Hawke or the player was. It was as if Hawke was making them bisexual. For example let's say I'm a straight guy, but your prescene changes my entire character and suddenly I have the hots for you.

Of course I can't know exactly what the writers were thinking, but the way the sexuality was displayed made it seemed very shoe-horned in to me.

Also since I'm sure the inevitable "homophobe" insult is going to get thrown around sooner or later. Let me make it clear that I have no problem with homosexuality or bisexuality, as long as it is a feature of a fully realized character. For example bisexuality felt very natural on Isabella (though I hated her) but on the others it seemed tacked on. At least in the way Bioware chose to deploy it.

Meh, I feel the "everyone is a straight white male" thing that most games use is very shoehorned in myself, so perhaps I'm just viewing Bioware's games as a great breath of fresh air.

These games really benefit from the variety, and a lot of games suffer from its lack.

Melissia wrote:Meh, I feel the "everyone is a straight white male" thing that most games use is very shoehorned in myself, so perhaps I'm just viewing Bioware's games as a great breath of fresh air.

These games really benefit from the variety, and a lot of games suffer from its lack.

Well if we're taking demographics, "straight white male" makes sense to me. However, diversity is nice, but only when it isn't forced. Sexuality should be a well written feature of a character whether it be straight, gay, bi, or whatever. Here it felt like an after-thought.

On the matter of sexuality it should depend on the setting; In a future utopia inhabited by a variety of species then bisexuality being the norm would make more sense whereas in a religiously dominated dark ages themed game the straight, no sex before marriage line would be better suited.

corpsesarefun wrote:On the matter of sexuality it should depend on the setting; In a future utopia inhabited by a variety of species then bisexuality being the norm would make more sense whereas in a religiously dominated dark ages themed game the straight, no sex before marriage line would be better suited.

Fortunately, neither of those is related to Dragon Age.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:On the matter of sexuality it should depend on the setting; In a future utopia inhabited by a variety of species then bisexuality being the norm would make more sense whereas in a religiously dominated dark ages themed game the straight, no sex before marriage line would be better suited.

Fortunately, neither of those is related to Dragon Age.

Yeah I haven't played dragon age two so I can't really comment on if it suits the setting or not.

asimo77 wrote:Really? Those scores seem rather low, especially considering how the scale works in VG ratings. Less than 7 usually means trash unless you're a huge fan of the series/genre. I think the DA's have enough polish to garner at least a 7, most people outside of the Bioware and RPG circle can enjoy them.

I don't think the game is very polished. It feels like it was haphazardly thrown together quickly and pushed out to market. But then me and my buddy encountered numerous glitches, none gaming breaking really, but more than a few. Bioware games are usually really well polished. I feel I can only describe DA2 as polished enough not to be horrible. A lot of things that could have been done to make the game better just weren't done.

I guess I consider 6.5 to be mediocre. You can play it and you'll probably have fun but it's nothing special. You'll forget about the game pretty fast. But then this is probably where the gap comes in. I still agree with the Game Infromer review that said DA2 does everything to cater to people who didn't like Origins while alienating the people who did. I thought Origins was an amazing game in every way. I never really understood how people thought it could be bad.

I probably sound like I find nothing redeeming in the game but that isn't really true. I just tend to focus more on the negatives than the positives.

Also to move this topic slightly away from depressing complaints and problems with the games, who are your guys' fave characters? It's Carver for me fo sho.

I did 2 play throughs, one with a warrior and one with a mage. The sibling interactions are nice, though I always felt more could have been done with them.

The siblings were both interesting. I enjoyed Varric myself. It was worth brining him along just to see what situation you could get him to talk you out of next . Other than that I not particularly attached to the cast. Though I can say as a positive that Bioware managed to make a game without a straight Carth-clone for once. Anders and Fenris are as close as you get but they never manage to be as whiny as Carth so,

The only problem I had with origins was that it was really boring playing a melee character. That's the problem that DA2 fixed looking at the demo. Hopefully it didn't cause any other problems though.

I don't think the game is very polished. It feels like it was haphazardly thrown together quickly and pushed out to market. But then me and my buddy encountered numerous glitches, none gaming breaking really, but more than a few. Bioware games are usually really well polished. I feel I can only describe DA2 as polished enough not to be horrible. A lot of things that could have been done to make the game better just weren't done.

As far as polish goes I feel like optimization and a few bugs were the only negatives. The animations are nice, the graphics are good, the menus are slick, and so on. In my understanding of what constitutes polish it's those small things. It's the grease between the wheels, the stuff that makes the game's parts work together, that are polish. It's not so much the meat of the game, and so I think DA2 had a fair amount of polish.

I guess I consider 6.5 to be mediocre. You can play it and you'll probably have fun but it's nothing special. You'll forget about the game pretty fast. But then this is probably where the gap comes in. I still agree with the Game Infromer review that said DA2 does everything to cater to people who didn't like Origins while alienating the people who did. I thought Origins was an amazing game in every way. I never really understood how people thought it could be bad.

I probably sound like I find nothing redeeming in the game but that isn't really true. I just tend to focus more on the negatives than the positives.

I guess my perspective on VG ratings is a little different, your 6.5 sounds equivalent to my 7 or so. I'm also in the opposite camp as you, wasn't a huge fan of DA:O so I didn't really feel alienated by DA2, though I really enjoyed the improvements it brought.

I did 2 play throughs, one with a warrior and one with a mage. The sibling interactions are nice, though I always felt more could have been done with them.

This exactly how I feel. The characters had so much potential but they don't explore them as much as I would have liked. The foundation of the characters in DA2 are better than DA:O IMO, but we don't see enough meaningful interactions with them like in Origins. Origins took kinda uninspired characters but gave them enough good screen time to make you care. DA2 is the opposite: good start but not enough exposition.

The siblings were both interesting. I enjoyed Varric myself. It was worth brining him along just to see what situation you could get him to talk you out of next . Other than that I not particularly attached to the cast. Though I can say as a positive that Bioware managed to make a game without a straight Carth-clone for once. Anders and Fenris are as close as you get but they never manage to be as whiny as Carth so,

I think I'm the only person on the planet who liked Carth and Kaiden Also the voice acting for the companions was pretty good.

I can definitely agree about the characters. I did think that their interactions with each other (in dialogue cut scenes) was a good plus though. I've been waiting for years for Bioware to start fleshing out more with party members interacting with one another on their own without the PC.

I honestly didn't mind Carth too much. I thought Kaiden was a horribly boring bump on a log. Alistair was the height of the Carth clones. He was witty so it was easy to overlook his whining.

Also. "Swooping is bad."

Alistair was my second favourite from DA:O. Shale comes in first though, no contest.

I too would like to see party members being fleshed out without your involvement. You should sometimes be a mediator, rather than always the center of the companions' problems and/or affections. In fact I always wondered why your companions could only fall in love with the PC and not each other.

asimo77 wrote:Alistair was my second favourite from DA:O. Shale comes in first though, no contest.

I too would like to see party members being fleshed out without your involvement. You should sometimes be a mediator, rather than always the center of the companions' problems and/or affections. In fact I always wondered why your companions could only fall in love with the PC and not each other.

I think Isabela and fenris hook up if you listen to their party banter

Those were my least used party members, so no wonder I never ran into this. I skipped Fenris because he's a skinny, brooding, white-haired, pretty boy, with a sword taller than himself. No thanks get back to your JRPG. And I didn't like his voice acting as much as the others.

And Isabella...ugh Isabella. Yes we know you have tons of sex and a 15 year old's sense of humour, now please shut up.

Though I'm not suprised about her and Fenris since she seems to have sex with everything.

asimo77 wrote:
Firstly what's the PA?

Penny Arcade.

asimo77 wrote:
Anyway what I meant is that it seemed like the characters were specifically altering their sexuality to suit whatever Hawke or the player was. It was as if Hawke was making them bisexual. For example let's say I'm a straight guy, but your prescene changes my entire character and suddenly I have the hots for you.

Sure, I know, but my point is that sexuality isn't really all that important to who a person is in all cases. If a straight guy sleeps with a man he doesn't instantly become gay, or suddenly turn into a genius, he's still the same guy. Of course, some people enshrine their sexuality and make it the crux of their being, but lots of others don't. As such, the idea that Hawke is somehow magnetic to the people he surround himself with doesn't bother me. Plus I don't really consider any characters in RPGs to be fundamentally independent of the protagonist, so the idea that their personalities might be constructed to suit one is not offensive to me.

Then again maybe my perspective is flawed. I tend not to see gender roles or sexual decisions as being significant in any way, even in my real life.