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 Psienesis wrote:
Also, if you don't like gay romances, don't have one, it's that simple.

I suspect that at least some of the complaints about it come from how Anders was mishandled in DA2. His dialogue and romance track are written in such a fashion that giving him a friendly greeting when you first meet him is seemingly treated as flirting. It's not that the protagonist greets Anders in a particularly flirtatious fashion. Rather, it's that literally within the first few friendly comments that you make to Anders, you pretty much have to say the equivalent of "Not interested!" in order to get yourself back off the romance track with him (as indicated by the relevant conversation symbol).

But the DA2 romances weren't handled well in any event. The fact that everyone (except the DLC character) was treated as bi- where the protagonist was concerned, was a rather stupid design decision. Isabella, sure. Her tendencies that way had been suggested in the first game. But every single last one of the others as well?

Eumerin wrote:


But the DA2 romances weren't handled well in any event. The fact that everyone (except the DLC character) was treated as bi- where the protagonist was concerned, was a rather stupid design decision. Isabella, sure. Her tendencies that way had been suggested in the first game. But every single last one of the others as well?

Well, Aveline and Varric were both straight. Of course, they were the two you couldn't romance at all...

Personally, I only bothered with the romance storylines on one playthrough. I went for Isabella because I thought she'd be more fun. I ended up disliking her a lot (not as much as I ended up hating Anders and what's-her-name-the-Elf-Bloodmage, tho) and during my second playthrough, the only characters I was interested in were married to their XO or their crossbow, so I got no play.

I suspect that at least some of the complaints about it come from how Anders was mishandled in DA2. His dialogue and romance track are written in such a fashion that giving him a friendly greeting when you first meet him is seemingly treated as flirting. It's not that the protagonist greets Anders in a particularly flirtatious fashion. Rather, it's that literally within the first few friendly comments that you make to Anders, you pretty much have to say the equivalent of "Not interested!" in order to get yourself back off the romance track with him (as indicated by the relevant conversation symbol).

This is kind of a thing with Bioware, because, as near as I can tell, they write the storylines to permit only so many of these conversation-cutscenes between characters.

The other BW game I'm playing these days is Star Wars: The Old Republic and, for the Jedi Consular storyline, they throw two Companions at you that are potential Romances, and the Flirt chat options kick off almost immediately (and some of them are rather forward for... anyone, really, but especially a Jedi!). Now, I play hard-line Jedi, so attachments to people are verboten, being a violation of the Jedi Code... but you have to put these two down hard and fast, before you start getting into stringing-them-along territory and earning Dark Side points for your deceptions.

But the DA2 romances weren't handled well in any event. The fact that everyone (except the DLC character) was treated as bi- where the protagonist was concerned, was a rather stupid design decision. Isabella, sure. Her tendencies that way had been suggested in the first game. But every single last one of the others as well?

Remember that DA is the first game BW released that toyed with the Romance options. This would be further refined in Mass Effect, where some characters are gay, some are straight, and some are bi. They backslid in SW: TOR (probably due to MPAA and EA pressures), and all of your character Romance options are strictly hetero. This changes slightly in recent updates, allowing bi/homosexual romance options, but only with minor, inconsequential NPCs in side-missions. BW/EA has been taking a lot of flak since the game came out over this, though.

 Psienesis wrote:
Remember that DA is the first game BW released that toyed with the Romance options. This would be further refined in Mass Effect, where some characters are gay, some are straight, and some are bi. They backslid in SW: TOR (probably due to MPAA and EA pressures), and all of your character Romance options are strictly hetero. This changes slightly in recent updates, allowing bi/homosexual romance options, but only with minor, inconsequential NPCs in side-missions. BW/EA has been taking a lot of flak since the game came out over this, though.

?

While it's not clear, I assume by "toying" you're referring to same sex romance options. Those have been around for both sexes since at least Jade Empire, and weren't handled anywhere near as clumsily in that game as they were in DA2.

Straight romances in Bioware games have been around since Baldur's Gate 2.

Have to admit, I turned BG2 off after, like, 15 minutes. The 2nd ed ruleset never, IMO, translated well to a computer game.

illuknisaa wrote:(added moar gaymance)

illuknisaa wrote:Besides who needs dai when witcher has had better nude scenes?

And this is why we can't have nice things.

The romances in DA2 were pretty bad. And I rather liked the game. I think it was because Aveline was about the only character who - based on her actual personality - would have been worth romancing. And with the way the beginning scene worked that went right out the window. Isabella seemed cool right up until you found out what a terrible person she is, and Merrill? Sheesh. No.

I found myself just skipping romances in DA 2.

 Psienesis wrote:
Have to admit, I turned BG2 off after, like, 15 minutes. The 2nd ed ruleset never, IMO, translated well to a computer game.

Oh lord, yes. It aged so badly. Every single fight basically is: pause, buff entire party with a super-clunky interface, rape enemies. Repeat. Boring as hell :/

 Lynata wrote:

illuknisaa wrote:(added moar gaymance)

illuknisaa wrote:Besides who needs dai when witcher has had better nude scenes?

And this is why we can't have nice things.

I don't get what your point is.

Bioware promotes itself as a forward thinking company that creates engaging characters and mature games but when it comes time to show mature stuff they just pussy out.

So far dragon age is nothing but gakky anime drama with grind fest combat.

Hey, Bioware is super progressive. They got a gay character in DA2.

A super clichee character who threw himself at the first butt in sight, reducing the character to his sexual orientation alone. Not to mention that most characters were made bisexual. Because progressive.

Yes, because that's the most important thing that Anders did in Dragon Age 2....

 Compel wrote:
Yes, because that's the most important thing that Anders did in Dragon Age 2....

I hated him being protected by plot armor - poor writing is poor =(

illuknisaa wrote:I don't get what your point is.

My point ... I'm not sure I made a point, rather than a sad realisation/observation.

It's interesting how a whole lot of people seem to bash these games based on featuring romance options not only pandering to the traditional selection of heterosexual chicks for your male character but actually featuring something for everyone, and then turn around praising a game as sexist as The Witcher for its nude scenes. If you want hardcore pornography, perhaps you'd be better off watching a couple videos on the web? I dunno about you, but I'm playing RPGs for their story. Either way, I think that post was a good insight into why the gaming industry looks like it does. Or society in general (bonus points for using female genitalia as an insult, by the way - it suits this argument perfectly ). Hence the "nice things" meme.

On a sidenote, I'm also undecided about whether I should really call the usage of nude scenes "mature", by the way. It certainly is content meant for adults, but the unhealthy fixation some people seem to have on it does not strike me as an adult mindset.

 Lynata wrote:

illuknisaa wrote:I don't get what your point is.

My point ... I'm not sure I made a point, rather than a sad realisation/observation.

It's interesting how a whole lot of people seem to bash these games based on featuring romance options not only pandering to the traditional selection of heterosexual chicks for your male character but actually featuring something for everyone, and then turn around praising a game as sexist as The Witcher for its nude scenes.

Wait, I thought you always argued in favor of diversity? Can't there be Bioware's written-by-a-high-schooler romance games featuring progressive content for those that like that sort of thing, as well as the Witcher's approach?

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Compel wrote:
Yes, because that's the most important thing that Anders did in Dragon Age 2....

I hated him being protected by plot armor - poor writing is poor =(

Seaward wrote:Can't there be Bioware's written-by-a-high-schooler romance games featuring progressive content for those that like that sort of thing, as well as the Witcher's approach?

To be honest, at this point I've come to believe that society at large is currently not capable of dealing with that much diversity/freedom. In an ideal world, unveiled* sexism, racism and religious zealotry at the player's fingertips would merely add to a game's immersion and storytelling potential, but in reality and given our culture's current climate, they can easily turn out to be a supporting vehicle for some players' wicked personal beliefs, so if it were entirely up to me, I would say that exerting caution/restraint rather than pandering to these tendencies would have a positive effect on society.

Ultimately, it comes down to what you believe the ideal society should look like, and what you would be willing to sacrifice for it.

I mean, it would be less of a problem if this were some sort of side effect or niche phenomenon, where a responsible society could afford to ignore it. But it isn't, at least from what I have seen and played.


(*as in: directly applied to other human beings or real life religions, and thus explicitly mirroring real world issues, rather than being "cushioned" by limiting their application to non-human species and fantasy faiths)

Well.

I won't be buying it. I'm a little sick of Bioware's Awesome Button "RPGs" wherein you can complete the entire game rather easily without ever spending a point on any of your skills. There are just better actual RPGs out there these days.

I'm looking forward to it, the more videos and tidbits they release about it, the more excited I get.

I'm trying to justify the collector's addition.

A good / incredibly annoying thing is that I don't need to try to justify that. Being a PC gamer, the collectors edition doesn't exist in the UK, except for the ridiculously priced 'Digital Download Deluxe' edition.


My current thinking is buying it from http://www.cdkeys.com

Seaward wrote:I'm a little sick of Bioware's Awesome Button "RPGs" wherein you can complete the entire game rather easily without ever spending a point on any of your skills.

To be fair, the "awesome button" meme has absolutely nothing to do with attributes or difficulty, but visual representation of gameplay. I'm also fairly sure that no-one has finished any of the DA games without increasing their attributes. Or, well, if they did, they probably shouldn't play on the easiest difficulty. I know I died a lot in some segments of DA2.

Compel wrote:My current thinking is buying it from http://www.cdkeys.com

Huh, thanks for the hint! I was considering gamersgate.co.uk, but it is quite a bit cheaper on your page.
Did a bit of googling for customer reviews, and it seems they check out.

Seaward wrote:
Well.

I won't be buying it. I'm a little sick of Bioware's Awesome Button "RPGs" wherein you can complete the entire game rather easily without ever spending a point on any of your skills. There are just better actual RPGs out there these days.

This doesn't make any sense. Someone needs to stop sipping on the Haterade and avoid Reddit.

I loved the Mass Effect series and Dragon Age 1 (and KOTOR), but the demo for DA2 didn't do it for me.

The apparent return to form (of DA1) with Inquisition has my attention, but I'm going to hold out and see what the response is to people playing the actual game. A woman I was dating played through Bioware's games at my suggestion, and loved all of the above and DA2.

And that's why we're not dating anymore.

I kid, there are other reasons. But her enjoying DA2 did make me ponder firing it up. Just never got around to it, and am tempted to get through it before Inquisition, so until I hear the latter is solid, I'm skipping the former.

 Frankenberry wrote:
This doesn't make any sense. Someone needs to stop sipping on the Haterade and avoid Reddit.

I think I may be one of the few people in the world who's never been to Reddit.

I'm also someone who selected Soldier in ME3 and didn't spend a single talent point just to see how difficult it'd be. It wasn't that difficult.

 Forar wrote:



I kid, there are other reasons. But her enjoying DA2 did make me ponder firing it up. Just never got around to it, and am tempted to get through it before Inquisition, so until I hear the latter is solid, I'm skipping the former.

DA 2 simply is a mediocre game. It's a mediocre game on its own and a terrible, terrible successor. Now that Bioware has produced two bi-polar games, maybe they can find a good middle ground with Dragon Age 3. Unless they shoehorn the demon baby in. Like, really, don't.

The sad part for DA2 is that you could see the great game sitting there, but all we got was a pile of unfinished and unpolished garbage

I'm fairly excited about Dragon Age 3.

I liked DA:O OK, but I found my group to be non-awesome, some of the characters really grated on me.

I liked Dragon Age 2 better. I found the mechanics to be too dumbed down, but I found the characters to be much, much more likeable - to the point I'd say I liked Dragon Age 2 substantially better than the first one.

So I'm sort of hoping they can take the best elements of both and make the best Dragon Age yet. I'm going to wait for some early reviews but the truth is unless they're hideously bad I'm likely to buy it no matter what, I want some closure to the story.

 LordofHats wrote:
The sad part for DA2 is that you could see the great game sitting there, but all we got was a pile of unfinished and unpolished garbage

Exactly. The premise was pretty good actually - having a story centered around Hawke, a single guy, instead of Hawke the "ISAVETEHWORLD" dude again was a good idea and I was excited for it. Poor, spammy combat system, Bioware (tm) companions and 3 dungeon designs for the entire game, among other things, ruined it. DA2 made a lot of good small decisions, e.g. changing the crafting system. But overall, it failed at being a good game.

Bioware really needs to get out of their clichee comfort zone with the characters and stop protecting them in 3 layers of plot armor. Plot armor is the worst thing you can do as a writer as it basically says "We know this doesn't work!". It failed with Kai Leng and it failed with Anders. Don't do it again...

The thing I think of most when I think of DA2 is self defeating story theme. The game tries to play this story of mages who are unfairly oppressed by those douchy Templars, but I'll be damned if it was impossible for me to turn my back for 5 seconds without them going "BLOOD MAGIC IM AN ABOMINATION NOW HRRRR" on me.

Seriously. Trying to play a reasonable well meaning person in that game was like slitting my wrists. I sided with the Templars at the end just cause everything in the game proved them right XD

Oh lord, yes, that was hilarious

They started out with Merill who used blood magic with a "Meh, it gets stuff done and I will be careful!" attitude which isn't too bad...and then proceeds to make it clear that mages of all kinds are bad, bad, bad and a threat to peace.

DA:O did a good job at showing blood magic and its role and, more importantly, of mages who are aware of their great power and...great responsibility. Enter DA2 which poops all over this...

I liked Anders in awakening, but in DA2 he was just insufferable. That tattooed assassin was worse though. He's one of those characters you can play Linkin Park to.