Dragon Age

[Paelos]

Qunari are the new Draenai: horned and stupid looking.

My new favorite moment that I'd yet to encounter, when you help out the stupid wimpy elf get with his girlfriend:

Morrigan: "Is anybody else fighting the urge to vomit? No? 'Tis just me?"
Ohgren: "No, I'm right there with ya..."

 

[Fordel]

Agreed that DA:O's combat was a clusterfuck. In particular, the inability for anyone (except mages) to hit moving targets, the ineffectiveness of warrior and rogue skills compared to their toggles, and the effectiveness of kiting because the AI becomes fixated on a single target (combined with everyone's inability to hit a moving target).

Is THAT what is going on?


That explains so much... I was saving some village from zombies or whatever, and all the zombies had aggro'd onto my archer character, so I kept pulling back him back but they kept chasing and all of my NPCs and non-party NPC friends were in turn chasing the zombies but no one was hitting anyone else and I had this ridiculous conga-line of zombies and knights all just running around as I did loops around the area wondering why none of my taunts or knockdowns were being used. 

[Sophismata]

That explains so much... I was saving some village from zombies or whatever, and all the zombies had aggro'd onto my archer character, so I kept pulling back him back but they kept chasing and all of my NPCs and non-party NPC friends were in turn chasing the zombies but no one was hitting anyone else and I had this ridiculous conga-line of zombies and knights all just running around as I did loops around the area wondering why none of my taunts or knockdowns were being used. 

That's it in a nutshell.

[koro]

Bioware calls it the "Dragon Age Shuffle."

[eldaec]

Arrows work fine on moving targets.

But yes, it is all very silly.

[Murgos]

I must be broken.  I cannot even start to enjoy this game.  I bought it day 1 and have tried 5 or 6 times to get started and I can't get more than an hour into it without wanting to go do something else.

I love KOTOR and ME 1 & 2, I love Baldur's Gate.  This game should be right in my wheel house but it just won't click.

[Lantyssa]

You're not broken.  I had a lot of difficulty getting into it.  My first play through I think I took two several months breaks.  My second play through is stalled.

It's just not that compelling.

[Reg]

And yet somehow this thread is 90 pages long. Seems like an awful lot of unwarranted attention for such a terrible disappointment of a game.

[Raguel]

What's weird is I love BG and DA, but can't get into ME :(. To make matters worse I bought ME2 at the same time lolz.

[Murgos]

And yet somehow this thread is 90 pages long. Seems like an awful lot of unwarranted attention for such a terrible disappointment of a game.

I love the, "How dare someone not like this game!!!" knee jerk.  It always speaks so well of the author.

If you had managed to restrain your sarcastic bile for the 15 seconds it would have taken to read my post you would have seen that what I am saying is pretty much 100% in agreement with you.  Obviously, people love this game.  I love everything else from Bioware even remotely similar.  This one just doesn't click with me.

[Merusk]

How far are you getting in that hour?  The tower fight right after you meet up with the wardens as the big battle is going on always bores the hell out of me.  Probably because you're so low level and it's just a SLOG to get through.

[Reg]

Actually Murgos, I understood your message perfectly well and wasn't replying to you.  I generally like Bioware games but I'm hardly a frothing fanboy. It's just that when someone says "It's not that compelling" about a top selling game that's generated almost a 100 pages of discussion it makes me come over all sarcastic.

/shrug

[Lantyssa]

That was my opinion of the game, not a fact.

[tmp]

How far are you getting in that hour?  The tower fight right after you meet up with the wardens as the big battle is going on always bores the hell out of me.  Probably because you're so low level and it's just a SLOG to get through.

The game seems to suffer from that in general -- there's plenty places (that early tower, the mage tower, the fade, the deep roads, etc and so on) which feel just one floor/section/whatever too large.

[Fordel]

I would send The Fade straight into the Abyss, except it's already there!

[Merusk]

How far are you getting in that hour?  The tower fight right after you meet up with the wardens as the big battle is going on always bores the hell out of me.  Probably because you're so low level and it's just a SLOG to get through.

The game seems to suffer from that in general -- there's plenty places (that early tower, the mage tower, the fade, the deep roads, etc and so on) which feel just one floor/section/whatever too large.

That's about the perfect way to put it.  The deep roads I didn't feel too badly about, but I was so high level by then I was gibbing things and just running through.  If anything I was annoyed I was out of inventory space to pick up goodies by the end.   Thinking about it, though, that does mean it was way too long.  Particularly the tomb part where you're picking up the armor set.

Ed: All this recent DA talk had me wanting to play again.  Redownloaded it from Steam and.... crash to desktop every time I start a new game.  ( I gave up on even trying to patch the Add-ins for old games and simply disabled them.)  Damn you EA/ Bioware. 

[eldaec]

The length of some sections is a fair criticsm, though at the time it was also kind of refreshing to find a game that erred on the side of being too long.

I doubt this is something you'll have to worry about in DA2.

[Ingmar]

How far are you getting in that hour?  The tower fight right after you meet up with the wardens as the big battle is going on always bores the hell out of me.  Probably because you're so low level and it's just a SLOG to get through.

The game seems to suffer from that in general -- there's plenty places (that early tower, the mage tower, the fade, the deep roads, etc and so on) which feel just one floor/section/whatever too large.

That's about the perfect way to put it.  The deep roads I didn't feel too badly about, but I was so high level by then I was gibbing things and just running through.  If anything I was annoyed I was out of inventory space to pick up goodies by the end.   Thinking about it, though, that does mean it was way too long.  Particularly the tomb part where you're picking up the armor set.

Ed: All this recent DA talk had me wanting to play again.  Redownloaded it from Steam and.... crash to desktop every time I start a new game.  ( I gave up on even trying to patch the Add-ins for old games and simply disabled them.)  Damn you EA/ Bioware. 

FWIW you can head back to Orzammar to sell after each section of the Deep Roads without causing any problems, and if you didn't murder the crazy guy I think he's a store too.

[MournelitheCalix]

I think another fair criticism of Dragon Age is that the enemy really doesn't feel like an enemy too terribly much.  It certainly isn't compelling.  In past Bioware games you hated the one you were pitted against.  I thoroughly enjoyed Jonelithe Irenicus for instance simply because he was always out there.  He was a factor in everything, even when you least expected it.  By the end of the game I was itching to put him into the ground.  The same could be said for Sarevok.  This time around it felt like the enemy was a dragon in black twirling its tail and screetching while other people told me about how bad it was.

The enemy lacked depth.  That being said though I still greatly enjoyed the game.

[Koyasha]

Overall the darkspawn and the dragon felt more like a natural disaster than an enemy, which meant they were no good as an enemy.  They were a backdrop for everything else that was going on, a motivator and a cause, but no more an enemy that you can focus on and engage emotionally than a hurricane or an earthquake.  They just are.

That left Loghain being the only real major 'enemy' in the game, and while defeating him was good, it's absolutely true that there wasn't a distinct sense of being really pissed at him.  As you compare, in other Bioware games I always felt like I had a really strong interest in defeating the last boss.  I hated Sarevok, and Jon Irenicus, and I really really hated Sun Li the Glorious Strategist, (as much as I also massively respected him for being so damned awesome) and Darth Malak annoyed me to no end and always gave me massive satisfaction when I finally finished him off.  Saren, too, invoked pretty strong feelings in me.  Loghain, I felt sorry for more than anything, because I could see that he was doing his best, but making one mistake after another, digging himself deeper, and being too stubborn and proud to admit his mistakes.

Perhaps ironically, ME2 had exactly the same problem - Harbinger never really felt like a very compelling enemy to me.  So while yeah, still good games, they didn't quite measure up to what I've come to expect from BioWare.

[Fabricated]

The Darkspawn had no sinister element to them. I was fighting notorcs from notmordor. The individual dramas in all of the treaty areas is what is the main draw I think.

Personally I'd be more for a political intrigue story with the Dragon Age world/engine, with NO "embodiment of evil" fantasy monster/god as the final badguy. Fighting dragons and ogres is fine but I'm kinda getting tired of killing god or a mysterious evil force in every RPG.

[Sjofn]

While I obviously found the game pretty goddamn compelling (I counted the other day and I've finished the fucking thing 9 times, that is so beyond what I've done in any RPG ever it's not even funny), I can see the complaints about the "bad guy" not being bad guy enough. I felt good about killing Howe, I felt good about fucking over Bhelen (although I usually don't), and I really hate Loghain's chick (Cauthrien? Something like that. She's a huge bitch to me, though, so I almost always kill her ass when I can). But yeah, while I felt satisfied about beating Loghain at the Landsmeet, I didn't hate him (shit, I hate Anora more, and I don't hate her near as much as some people). And Loghain's the "real" bad guy, the archdemon is just the "well, you got this army together, now you get to use it" resolution.

I totally would not cry if DA2 is a lot more political and personal, which is soooounds like it will be. My only worry in that regard is that I'm going to solve every problem by stabbing it in the face. Like even more than in Origins.

[Paelos]

I totally would not cry if DA2 is a lot more political and personal, which is soooounds like it will be. My only worry in that regard is that I'm going to solve every problem by stabbing it in the face. Like even more than in Origins.

Wait, wait...

There are other ways to solves problems in RPGs?

[Shrike]

Sometimes, but I prefer stabbing/shooting it in the face. Ironically, the game(s) where you could indulge the most in (relatively) non-violent solutions were the Fallout games, but there was where I tended to really scorch the earth as my solutions to problem NPCs.

What I found really interesting in DA was how much I couldn't find solutions I really liked to the various problems. Often it was a compromise or my character being forced into something by circumstance. An example was how I really did detest Anora, but there was simply no good way around making her queen. Everything else looked like it was going to turn into a soup sandwich and--being an elf--I was cut off from various "other" routes I might have been contemplating (i.e. scorching the earth and becoming generalissimo of ashes). Of course, I've only done one playthrough, but it's something that this particular character seemed destined to deal with.

[Paelos]

Dragon Age intentionally wanted most of the key decisions to be morally grey since all you really care about it getting troops for a fight against evil. One usually gets you kickass troops but you have to slaughter some folks, the other usually means saving the day but you get a bunch of pussies to fight for you.

[Sky]

The Darkspawn had no sinister element to them. I was fighting notorcs from notmordor. The individual dramas in all of the treaty areas is what is the main draw I think.

Personally I'd be more for a political intrigue story with the Dragon Age world/engine, with NO "embodiment of evil" fantasy monster/god as the final badguy. Fighting dragons and ogres is fine but I'm kinda getting tired of killing god or a mysterious evil force in every RPG.

So now we've turned around in a couple pages from 'how can DA2 not be about the blight' to 'it'd be better without the blight' :) I happen to agree, the blight was the weakest part of the game, along with being way too long in development. I hope DA2 doesn't suffer from the reverse: not enough time in the oven.

I have to admit I stalled in my first playthrough, I think I was about 85-90% complete? ME 2 I just devoured from beginning to end, maybe my tastes as a gamer have changed over the years? Maybe it was due to being a warrior type and having to grab cone of cold with the healer chick, just because. I hate metagaming, but I did it in DA.

Dragon Age intentionally wanted most of the key decisions to be morally grey

Har, grey wardens git it? Hyuk hyuk.

[Koyasha]

It's a pity that which troops you get makes damn near no difference at all, unless you're really weak and need their help to beat the dragon.

And I almost forgot about Howe.  Now he was probably the best villain in the game (hardly surprising with Tim Curry voicing him).  If he had been given a much more significant role throughout, he would have made the perfect villain to really hate.  Having him escape and then somehow show up after the Landsmeet, at the final battle somehow, maybe just trying to escape Denerim and happening to be an obstacle to you on your way to the archdemon - or perhaps rushing in and killing the archdemon himself (thus forcing a second fight with the dragon, after killing Howe) to try to take credit, would have made the post-Landsmeet part of the game a lot more satisfying, in my opinion.  Because once the Landsmeet is over, everything else tends to feel like cleanup, to me.

[Paelos]

The shocking thing, is that I've played the game twice all the way to the point of getting to the last gate before the main fortress, and then quit. I just couldn't care less about defeating the stupid demon. This time, I'm actually forcing myself to finish (on my 5th playthrough, not counting all the origins I started)

[Fordel]

The Darkspawn had no sinister element to them. I was fighting notorcs from notmordor. The individual dramas in all of the treaty areas is what is the main draw I think.

Personally I'd be more for a political intrigue story with the Dragon Age world/engine, with NO "embodiment of evil" fantasy monster/god as the final badguy. Fighting dragons and ogres is fine but I'm kinda getting tired of killing god or a mysterious evil force in every RPG.

That made me laugh so much 

Because it's totally true!

[Sjofn]

I totally would not cry if DA2 is a lot more political and personal, which is soooounds like it will be. My only worry in that regard is that I'm going to solve every problem by stabbing it in the face. Like even more than in Origins.

Wait, wait...

There are other ways to solves problems in RPGs?

Really what I mean is I don't want the whole game to be like Orzammar and the Deep Roads. I like doing talky talky talky, stab problem in face, talky talky. I don't like stringing out stabbing the problem in the face by having some douchebag be all "OK, stab this problem in the face, which will help me solve my own problem, which in turn will help me help you stab your BIG problem in the face" three times before he can finally fuckin' commit.

[Fabricated]

I never got around to playing a Dwarven Noble until lately and damn if seeing the political drama first hand doesn't make the decision who to crown a pain in the ass. Harrowmont is sort of a douche and a wimp and shuts Orzammar off from the surface and dies if you crown him, and Bhelen is a cockholster who turns Orzammar into a dictatorship but he opens relations with the surface and gives the casteless a shot at advancement if they volunteer to fight darkspawn.

[Koyasha]

Sometimes you need a good dictator to move things along, otherwise nothing ever actually gets done.

[Lantyssa]

As a city elf it was an easy choice with Bhelen.  As a dwarf noble, I wanted to stab them both.  There was no good choice there at all.

[Sjofn]

I uuuuusually pick Bhelen because I prefer the dictator breaking down their stupid caste system to the giant wuss isolationist traditionalist. I have only not destroyed the Anvil once, and I still haven't actually finished my Anvil-keepin' playthrough.  It's totally because I actually read Caridin's journal codex and the description of making a golem was so icky I can't bring myself to actually use the fuckin' thing.

I sort of like that there's no good choice for the Dwarf Problem, though.


PS: I killed Connor to solve THAT problem for the first time the other night and holy shit I am traumatized for life now. I'm such a dork.

[Fordel]

PS: I killed Connor to solve THAT problem for the first time the other night and holy shit I am traumatized for life now. I'm such a dork.

Look, that's what you gotta do with Abominations, don't let anyone tell you otherwise!