june gloom on 11/11/2009 at 21:49
twitching and foaming at the mouth
denisv on 11/11/2009 at 22:00
Man, video games have improved so much since companies started hiring people straight out of college whose education consisted of discussions about video games.
Displacer on 11/11/2009 at 22:05
They were right about one thing, things you do at one point in the game may affect later events. WARNING do not look at the spoilers if you haven't finished both The Circle and Redcliffe!
Unfortunately I was unable to Save the mages in the circle which later in the game forced me to kill a child because my mage was not strong enough to face the demon alone in the fade
Stitch on 11/11/2009 at 22:15
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
You know, like
Snow Crash.
hahah well played sir
Dragon Age has a great narrative in a "save the world from evil and break a few hearts along the way" sense. It works quite well to pull one through from point A to point B and create a game that feels (so far) like more than a collection of quests and levels.
But yeah, like most games it's not very character driven, which means that ultimately it's the narrative equivalent of a happy meal. But, at the same time, it does perfectly nail that happy meal like nobody else can.
Plus: sometimes you just want to eviscerate a dragon, comes with being a nerd.
Zygoptera on 11/11/2009 at 22:35
Quote Posted by Wynne
"what games are you playing that have such drastically better story and dialogue than Dragon Age?"
Considerably better? PST, Arcanum (albeit the game itself is hugely flawed), Outcast, VtMB, MotB, SS2, Thief 1
Somewhat better? both Fallouts (though they are worse, in parts), BG2, WC4, KotoR2, Bioshock
Some could be excluded for not being RPGs or not having (much) branching dialogue depending on the exact criteria applied, and it is impossible to not consider the setting and atmosphere to an extent as well.
In any case saying it's worse than those is certainly a case of praising DAO with faint damns, which is actually fair enough, setting aside my dislike of Standard Bioware Cliches and Formulations the dialogue is- generally-
far far away from being objectively bad (~Oblivion) and is usually good, some cringeworthy moments notwithstanding. I just wish it didn't feel quite so much like they'd planned the whole thing out on a whiteboard after a massive Martin/ Jordan/ Sapkowski reading binge and then plugged it into a 'ten things every RPG must have and how to integrate them into your storyline (C) Bioware2002' flowchart.
[edit: since I accidentally cut the disclaimer; I haven't finished the game and won't until such time as I pick up the PC version myself, so take with grain of salt]
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
You must be taking the piss, the Mass Effect PC port is a mess.
Your evidence for it being a mess is a little... underwhelming. Horrible performance relative to other ue3 games and people not even being able to launch the game seem like bigger problems, even if only one of them could reasonably be expected to be fixed by a patch (and the other can be largely fixed by removing the ludicrous film grain).
june gloom on 11/11/2009 at 22:58
Quote Posted by Zygoptera
SS2
ahem, highly debatable
The plot isn't much more than Aliens Meets The Thing, and the whole thing with the pod travelling 67 trillion miles in only 40 years is frankly ridiculous.
I like the game, but let's not put it on a pedestal it didn't earn.
Zygoptera on 11/11/2009 at 23:15
That's one of the setting/ atmosphere things, dethy. If you isolate solely the plot or solely the dialogue I'd tend to agree, but put them together with like the atmosphere etc and you end up with something greater than the sum of its parts. IMO, of course, is a given.
And I can't help thinking that "the -- form is dead, what is it you fear? The end of your trivial existence?" type of twist execution (also T1 and even BS) is exactly the sort of thing Bioware has been aiming at but not quite achieving for years.
june gloom on 11/11/2009 at 23:22
That second point I will agree with. It's not quite something you really see coming. You know from the boxart that she is in the game, and the game hints at it early on, but it's not until the big reveal that it hits home.
Bioshock, for that matter, I felt kinda fell short of the mark when it did the same trick. Partly because Irrational already did it before. The scene with Ryan completely stole the show, and it's a good thing it did.
mothra on 12/11/2009 at 14:07
Quote Posted by Displacer
They were right about one thing, things you do at one point in the game may affect later events. WARNING do not look at the spoilers if you haven't finished both The Circle and Redcliffe!
Unfortunately I was unable to
Save the mages in the circle which later in the game forced me to
kill a child because my mage was not strong enough to face the demon alone in the fadenot strong enough ? this was one of the first missions I did after osdagar and I never used Morrigan so she had no xp or new skills since joining my camp and she totally obliterated that demon in the fade. That's why I chose to actually reload and KILL the child in the "real" world (more xp !!!!)
mothra on 12/11/2009 at 14:32
Quote Posted by Wynne
......
nice if you enjoy the game. I pause all the time and direct the AI myself, still they sucked so much at Redcliffe and I barely got through it with 20 health potions (AND HEALING). Btw, most of the spells you listed are NOT available to you at the beginning of the game. MindBlast is the only one Morrigan has (I am a rogue) and she had only 2 lyrium potions which was not enough. Morrigan fighted the last 10minutes with 0 mana. I didn't know about the firetrap (where is it ? I didn't see it anywhere). I can't even imagine playing the game on hard, since normal seems already so tedious and to be honest, I just don't get the "AI combat slot" menue. I am a programmer/software engineer and this is one seriously confusing way of giving orders/pre-programming them. so I just deactivated them all and don't spend skill points on them.
Still, even with those 1000 permutations in dialogue and the different motivations of the NPCs depending on your origin (a thing I myself pointed out as the best part in the game) does not change that I always get the feeling to play/meet the same characters in a Bioware game. Nothing so far, even with those many twist and turns DA got, surprised me in any way. I knew who will die and who's the main asshole the moment I arrived in Osdagar. And they turned out to be exactly that. When I saw sten in his cage with a (!) above the head I knew: oooh, this will be the controversial Carth/aehm Sten character with the ambigous moral background I hire out of pure opportunismn. Next up: somebody in my party will betray me or I will sacrifice him. If not, I will be truly surprised. Alignment system: botched.
You can only annoy/uplift characters that are in your party at the very moment you decide. So if you know you will, say, save some kittens from a tree. Just change to Alistair/Leilana, the christians, they approve and everything's cozy. Afterwards change back to Morrigan/Sten and they will lovingly rescue the kitten and get stabbed multiple times while doing so.
If they are present during the decision they will moan and bitch and you loose sympathy. They should have included ALL party members in the alignment system.
