Monte Carlo

^ Yes, that's the sort of thing I was imagining. It would have been pretty easy to blend them in with the origins as well --- another criticism of the game. Edit --- the Origins and the NPCs. I've got an Orlesian spy, a professional soldier, a shape-changing witch and a commando-assassin with a luxury footwear fetish in my group. Funnily, I can't use them for strategic advantage against the Blight. Which is a shame.

Actually, one of the interesting things DA tried to do was make your character deal with a central problem, i.e. The Blight, in the way you wanted. The Blight is like the Nazis, they want to take over and destroy everything and negotiation is impossible. The war is one of national survival: good, bad and ugly people simply can't ignore it. You can make the end justify the means or you can try to win with honour. Or, like most of us, you do a bit of both depending on the circumstances or what you think you can get away with at the time. And, of course, with the people you are relying on to get the job done --- what do they think? Duncan is an interesting mentor. He's an extremist. A Kamikaze. That dip-sh*t Alistair worships him as some sort of paragon of virtue is revealing. Of course Duncan swindles the desperate into becoming Grey Wardens --- who else would join? It's a foreign legion of the desperate. I'm liking all that. The game doesn't pan out as dark or interesting as the premise but that's another subject. However, this strength is also a structural weakness. The Darkspawn army moves mysteriously slowly. The sense of urgency in DA that should be there isn't. Conversely, a CRPG shouldn't be time trial. Tough one to manage, and I think DA fails. Not an epic FAIL, but I began to feel the Blight was just a plot device, not anchored in the structure of the game as it should have been. I'd have put a Blight-themed challenge in at certain key moments to explain how you were slowing their advance (destroy that bridge, assassinate that general, disrput those supplies) but that's probably the wargamer in me speaking. Nonetheless, if you didn't like Duncan (I was amibvalent) then that's tough. You joined the Wardens out of desperation, your bed was made for you and now you have to lie in it. Funnily, it's a bit like PS:T in that the die is cast for your character. Like I say, bits of DA irritate me greatly --- Elements where greatness beckons just didn't make it, and I simply cannot warm to most Bioware NPCs nowadays, they aren't written for me. So I take the least annoying ones. It's still a great achievement but, and I say this not of nostalgia but because I played both games in the last month --- it ain't no BG2. Cheers MC

^ Nope, no brothel-crawling for this callsign. Well, maybe once or twice.

Hmmm, I know revenants aren't exactly original, but the Dragon Age take on them --- undead uber-tanks with genuinely powerful and original attacks / tactics --- made them, for me, one of the highlight enemies of the game.

Grom, remember all the groovy magic items for serious BG2 combat micro-ing? This sword gives this bonus and I can D/W it with this axe against this monster to provide that effect... and so on. Armour, shields, potions, rings, amulets... the entire spam of Gygaxian magic there for you to find. The magic items in DA are in the foothills of such old-skool greatness.

And I was sure that they were going to include rust monsters. And they didn't, another dream dashed on the sharp, merciless shores of the Bioware design dept.

Although my view on this project is an enormous bucketload of Meh, I'm still pleased that Obz got the gig. It's a tough economic climate and they're in work. So what Grom said +1.

^ Please Starwars, teach someone else's grandmother to suck eggs. I'm more than aware of the challenges of modding. Which proves my point --- look at the DA project list. Work out a 75% attrition rate (generous) of announced projects and find me one or two that look genuinely interesting. Great mods are usually announced. Very few for DA are. I'm sure Adam Miller et. al will come up with something eventually. Cheers MC

Vol, you argument is bunk. At least you are consistent. With DA Bio released the toolset in it's entirety. They courted some of the leading lights in the NWN modding scene. With BG2 the source code was never released. Modders were never encouraged (with the laudable exception of Dave Gaider, who released his own extremely good BG2 mod to finish off what he wanted to see in ToB). It's a perfectly valid comparison. BG2 modding, incredibly, is still going on. DA, a very hot title, has a strange collection of dodgy romance stuff and new ways to make your character's hair mauve. Cheers MC

I'm not so sure, Grom. Why? Classes. DA has three classes. OK, within those there is a bit of sub-specialisation. But, when all's said and done the fighter and rogue are fairly indivisible (the melee rogue is just a light-fighter variant of the warrior class) and the mage can take some interesting paths, including the twinky battle caster option. Compare and contrast to BG2's take on the 2E AD&D system and kits. Love 'em or hate 'em (and I generally hate 'em in a P&P context) the multi-class and dual-class combos in BG2 add a hell of a lot of options. Grind? Hell yeah. Different ways to manage the grind? Hell yeah. From the ridiculous Kensai mage to the bizarro bard kits there were dozens of ways to spam your way through the hordes, with a more diverse NPC roster (from a class / ability POV). I even played a 'unpopular NPC' gimped game with the dudes a lot of people didn't bother with (the shapechanger, Duran Duran haircut Tiefling, halfling paladin chick etc), with the main NPC as a CE half-orc (wait for it) Cleric / Thief. Again, I'm not dissing DA --- I loved all the fighting. It's just that (as Ramza points out) BG2 manages to give you the feeling of scale, of different possibilities beyond the 'click on monster' nonsense Vol describes. And this is before I factor in the awesome modding around BG2 which, strangely, still hasn't happened for DA yet. And the IE is probably tougher to mod. Go figure. Cheers MC

So, after five pages of intriguing BG2 / DA comparisons what we have decided is that I have to wait until Dragon Age 4 --- Awakening of the Origins of MOAR ROMANCE to get the superlative RPG experience. xD This doesn't wash after a SIX year development cycle. Nazi Germany was defeated in five years for chrissakes. I was interested in the "Community Likes it then Hates it" point. I like Dragon Age, and I was a hater during the development cycle. Check out my happy crow-eating posts in my personal reviews. But the flaws do resonate more on each playthrough. I still like it, but it ain't no BG2. OK it wasn't meant to be but for all the obvious reasons comparison is inevitable. One last point - I saw the apocryphal screenie of Firkraag being killed by a monk using quivering palm but could never do it.

I'm not crying, hey I don't know what Wheel of Time is except from this thread. Now I know it's a series of uber-spammed fantasy books that some people like and some people don't. As for CRPGs, I wouldn't touch ME2 as far as I could throw it. It appears to be the antithesis of everything I look for in a game. Most people here have other stuff they're into gaming-wise, like Hurlie's strange stat-based sports sims or my nerdy panzer-addiction. I'm not jonesing for any game in particular to be honest. I need a reason to be excited about this, haven't really seen one yet. Cheers MC

^ Lyr, shouldn't that be wheel-based? I agree with Slowtrain.

^ Sounds like a nightmare arrangement. Vanity developers hire pros to Make Their Dreams Come True? What could possibly go wrong?

I would love to be excited and have extreme nerdgasm but I don't know what The Wheel of Time actually is.

I'm not following the fan feedback for DA2 slavishly, but the average fan seems to accept that (a) mages are overpowered and (b) rogues, although useful and potentially powerful are in a bit of an identity crisis. Warriors are OK, although the 2H specialism is indeed a glass cannon that needs a lot of micro. OTOH the min-maxed dual-wield warrior is a chainsaw. Of course, they all want even more romances and DRAMA! but this is a given. Have to echo the DA - DA2 comparison to BG - BG2 aspirations... but Bio had their big chance with the first game. Sadly, DA2 if anything will probably be even more linear. Of course, I hope not, to this day I am genuinely astonished that there was no hat tip to the Durlag's Tower / WK type legacy of the BG games with a big sprawling there-for-the-sake-of-it dungeon. Cheers MC

I must admit the replayability issue is hitting me too: unlike BG2 there isn't enough going on outside of the critical path / main quests to justify more tinkering. There are also fewer character builds to tinker with and the deus ex machina Bio style gets under my skin. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game but I just can't get back into it the same way I can (like, right now) with BG2. For example, I can play BG2 with my own characters like a turbo-charged IWD game. Simply not possible with DA. I can solo BG2. Ditto. I can visit big dungeons that have nothing to do with the critical path. And so on. I think when the XP comes out enough time will have passed for me to have a mega-playthrough with a new character.

What Dragon Age really needs is Sherman flame tanks, King Tigers and Panzergrenadier as a playable class. Sorry, this Company of Heroes addiction is getting to me.

I'm a bit surprised at the WTF? quotient here with regards to the development time for DA2. The (proprietary) engine is done. Game mechanics and setting? Done. Surely it's about polishing / turbo-charging the existing engine and adding features, it seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable timescale, even with localisation and marketing etc.

BG2 works well on the widescreen mod but that mosaic / tile effect on the dialogue screen is more prominent. No biggie. I suppose that one day I won't be able to run BG2... and I will have to put the discs in a frame in my den like they were a classic platinum selling album or something. It really is that good. I have three copies, including the five-disc original in the big box and an unopened DVD version. No CE though, sadly. Cheers MC

Since my love affair with Company of Heroes started I've played hardly anything else. However, today I took ten minutes to make a new Dragon Age character (9 minutes mucking about with the face generator thingie, 1 minute spamming stats and waiting for the game to load) and founs myself strangely enthused. So I will be playing that to get ready for the XP and Return to Ostagar. I have also installed Men of War but found it a bit meh. Cheers MC

^ Er, he looks like Alistair, he clearly has the same VO artist and he makes Alistair-type gags. Yay! Basic Bioware NPC Template 459.01, please re-skin Alistair to look like a mage NPCbot!

^ Not really, all DA content scales. Another strange thing --- sell DA magic items and when you buy them back they scale too. It's like selling your +1 dagger at level 3, buying it back at level 15 and it's a +4 dagger.

That looks suitably awesome, thanks for the link.

Sigh. Company of Heroes 2: The Ardennes or North Africa. But no. However, I might try out the groovy looking Eastern Front mod.