Wynne on 11/11/2009 at 16:18

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Everyone has realized that you can download the DLC completely free via points received from achievements reached while playing the game, right? Right?



Somebody isn't playing on nightmare with the dexterity/archer hotfix in place. Seriously, if you're a veteran gamer and natural strategist, don't play on normal. And if even nightmare isn't hard enough, well, there will be mods. But the difficulty does seem to scale; it is, naturally, much harder fighting in the heart of things near the archdemon than it is over in Redcliffe.



What's missing is the Good Old Days. Just put on your rose-colored glasses and then BG2 will be endlessly better than Dragon Age in every conceivable way.

What's being said about the story of Dragon Age being either lacking in favor of combat or cheesy and lame comes from people who are either simply not paying very good attention (not talking to their companions regularly, ignoring or missing quests and skipping through dialogue) and talking only to Oghren and Alistair in his less serious moments. Possibly also from people who just simply don't like RPGs, and certainly from elitists. I mean, you don't come here expecting half of the populace to not be a bit elitist, and that is part of the charm after all. I like people who aren't easily impressed, it shows intelligence.

But be assured that those who are saying the game sucks and is nothing compared to X are certainly going to fall in the elitist category, and if they actually sat down to answer the question, "what games are you playing that have such drastically better story and dialogue than Dragon Age?" I think they would end up wracking their brain and then finally answering either "Planescape" (which of course is very dated by now, still awesome, but very dated) or "The Witcher." In the latter case, I can't disagree either, as I really enjoyed the Witcher--except for the fact that with its "LOOK LOL YOU HAD TEH SEKS NOW DERE IS BOOBIES ON DIS SEKS KARD!!!!" hilarity it was far cheesier than ANYTHING in DA. Yes, I'm including Oghren. And the voice acting is far more consistent than the American voices in the Witcher, which if you ask me were just awful, particularly that peasant woman. The animations and facial/lip movements also add a lot of life to DA which even the Witcher enhanced didn't quite have, despite how excellent it was. If you compare the Witcher and DA, I think you'd find a lot of the same spirit.

You mostly won't be hearing huge complaints on the DA General forums, except from trolls. There are good complaints, but not of that kind. The biggest and loudest complaints I've been hearing is that the ending they received based on their choices was SERIOUSLY depressing, and some of those complaints are coming from me. It is possible to get a happy ending of sorts, but even those have their price. You end up having to make some ugly choices, particularly if you're playing as a female.

There's a ton of story in the game, there really is--and about 75% of the time you can complete the quests two ways. What's interesting is that if you are a Dwarf Commoner first, then a Dwarf Noble, you might end up completing a certain quest one way and thinking "job well done" and having everything turn out good on the surface, then going back as a Dwarf Noble and realizing that the person you sided with is in your first play-through of the game is actually a complete snake whom you recognize from earlier. The characters exist the same way every time you play the game, but they will talk to you very differently based on whether you are an old friend, an old enemy, or that badass warden who has a reputation for systematically taking apart everything that annoys her.

The epic death blows? Eh, they are kinda cheesy, but they're a guilty pleasure. I have yet to kill a high dragon without a stupid grin on my face.

Once piece of advice; if you get the game, make sure you choose your spells carefully. Inferno, Blizzard, Mass Paralysis, Crushing Prison, and Waking Nightmare are all good 4th tier spells to work up to. And take the GILF with my name along unless you're playing a mage and are willing to take healing spells; you'll otherwise wish very much that you had in certain portions of the game.


As you progress, the game world map in DA gets steadily blacker as the Blight spreads up from Ostagar. That gave me a nice "oh, fuck" feeling.


That's actually just game balance and tactics. Two mages, or one mage with crowd control/healing (both) and one archer, are generally better to have. Fireballing archers is good because it knocks them on their asses, and Blizzard freezes them while Inferno damages them very fast. Have your warriors and rogues smash and stab the front line while your mage fireballs the back.

Also, the comparisons to JE and whatever are really weak. It's NWN2 that the game feels like more than anything else, particularly what with the zooming in and out, the graphical style, the interface style, the "build an army" kind of feeling. Except without the outdated and unbalanced game system and world, painful bugs, horribly unfinished status, generic rehash of BG2 companions (Elanee=Jaheira Lite, Casavir=Generic But Less Annoying Anomen) and the stupid [spoiler]"rocks fall, everyone dies"[/spoiler] joke ending. Yeah, I have a love/hate relationship with Obsidian. At least Bioware finishes their games and patches them as fast as they can. And having talked to them in person (at the Warden's Quest event, over numerous beers) I can say with even more certainty that they freaking love what they do. Dieter, Fernando, Mike, Matt, Chris, everybody we met there... you could fault them for a lot of things, but not intelligence, enthusiasm, or passion. They are constantly looking for ways to outdo themselves. Anybody who feels like, "they could have gone farther in distinguishing the world from other fantasy games," should tell them that, because feedback from regular gamers is the one thing they continually probed for during the days we were there. If enough people say it, they'll realize that's what their audience wants and they'll continue evolving as developers.

I agree a bit, I think they could have been a bit braver and bolder with their paintbrush, but I think it's partially that the differences in DA are rather subtle. Wait until you get down into the Deep Roads and see where the Darkspawn actually come from, for instance. Realizing that they don't just mindlessly kill every living thing they come across like I had first assumed (I can't go into detail without spoiling it) added a lot of character to the species for me. I wish you'd met intelligent emissaries like in the books, though.

To everyone who has critique for this game, if you think you know how Bioware could improve, then seriously tell them.

They actually fucking care. They're not just a bunch of faceless suits, they love gaming and they want to establish a strong developer-player line of communication; that's why you see them on the official forums all the freaking time. And that is probably the biggest advantage a developer ever has in this industry, a dedication to listening to their players, but it doesn't work if you don't take advantage and ask for what you want.

EvaUnit02 on 11/11/2009 at 17:35

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You must be taking the piss, the Mass Effect PC port is a mess. Even after the LONG delayed v1.02 patch I still get dialogue that clips off prematurely and their fix for the low res Garrus face texture was a joke. (It's high res in the menus but not where it counts - during dialogue exchanges and cutscenes. The fan fix released several months earlier remains was far better.) People were still experiencing crashes whilst playing Quasar, despite it supposedly being fixed by v1.02.

I honest doubt that we would've even gotten a new patch as late as we did if they didn't have to amend the game to make it compatible with the sad excuse for premium DLC that was Pinnacle Station.

Swiss Mercenary on 11/11/2009 at 20:06

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Or I can just load it up. I have it installed, and I've played through SoA a few weeks ago.

It's got its weak points - but that still doesn't make DA a spiritual successor, except in combat (When another game fits the bill far closer). And I'm on the "This is pretty good, I want to see more" side of the combat fence in DA



Never played NWN2, so while that may be a better comparison, I can't comment.



Yeah, black borders around the game screen, and rocks, and stuff. I just wasn't running into them as often as I do in JE/DA. I realise its a side effect of the human-eye viewpoint, and of the cost of developing 3d worlds, but some of them are immersion-killers. A small tree. Between two houses. Is impassable?

june gloom on 11/11/2009 at 21:28

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To be fair, critics do show a pattern of having difficulty remembering games that came out more than a year ago.

Aerothorn on 11/11/2009 at 21:39

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oh god don't get me started.

One of things that ended up being emphasized (over, and over, and over) as I worked my through my Narrative in Video Games course was just how little concious thought when into a lot of storytelling decisions. It wasn't that they had made conscious bad decisions - it's just that they weren't really thinking about it in the first place. Game cinematography tends to fall in this arena (with a few exceptions, like MGS4).

I agree with you that it sounds likely I won't like it, but Wynne made it sound like it was some sort of objective standard.

You know, like Snow Crash.