Dragon Age 2

[aries101]

at first I was totally fine with act 3. Two days later I thought about it some more and now think it was really stupid.

 

maybe kaftan will have similar experience?

 

In this thread at the Bioware's DA2 forum, there is a nice discussion going on about the story and the way it was implemented.

Spoilers abound so be warned (especially ending spoilers...) http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/304/index/6853352/3

 

I still think that the devs. maybe wanted to make a story ending like the one in the first Fallout game; DA2's ending also seems more open to me than say DA:O's. It certainly seems to leave it up to the player, the gamer to speculate what happens next. As far as the framed story goes, it does rewuire people to think for themselves and to fill in the blanks (the missing parts) themselves. Some people, not all obviosly, do maybe not know how to do this - to fill in the gaps in the story by themself. Because they have learned how to do do this - for various reasons.

 

There's also this thread at the Bioware DA2 forums discussing plotholes etc.

 

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/304/index/6872575/5

[Crazy Tuvok]

Actually, people complain no matter what. That's what the internet for. Just go BAck and read DA1 threads here or elsewhere. the same crying repeatedly.

 

Agree about the DA1 "crying", but there seemed to be a lot less "crying" about DA1 after people played it and a lot more I'll be damned this is actually a pretty good game.

 

With DA2 while equal amounts of pre-play "crying", here and elsewhere there is a LOT more played it and don't like it.

 

A lot more. If you read between the not-so-obvious-lines-we-are-going-to-give-Bio-good-score-no-matter-what, even many of the mainstream VG reviewers don't seem all that happy with it.

 

This latter part has what has been most eye-opening to me.

[Volourn]

I don't care about profesional reviewers. I don't care if they rate a game highly or lowly no matter. Go through the list of games reveiwed and tons of thema re jsut plain wrong - espicially how theyg et to said score. That said, the most 'fair' review I've read of DA2 is the Codex one. i don't agree with it but it's fair.

 

The whining on the forums about DA2 is a joke since there was the same whining after DA1. And, ME2, ME1, J2, KOTOR, NWN, and even TOB.

 

 

WAAWAA ! BIO betrayed their 'fans' (no such thing as fans, it's a myth), and all the otyher gobbleygook.

 

Go to the DA1 forums and read up about all the whining about the Derp Roads, end of the game, the attacks on the whole 'Alistair twist', the crying about the gay/bisexual romances 9or romances in general), the writing, the so called lack of C&C, the crappy combat, the horrible character system, how it betrayed the BG2 fans, and all the other stupid stuff.

 

or how DA2 is the death of BIO - just as TOB, NWN, KOTOR, JE, ME, DA, and ME2 were. So hilarious! Really hard to take such proclaimations seriously when it's been going on for over 10 years.

Edited April 1, 2011 by Volourn

[Amentep]

^Actually I don't remember KotOR being claimed as being the death knell of Bioware.

 

But I do remember BG:TOB, NWN, JE, ME, DA, ME2 and now DA2 all being claimed as such. Sure is a slow death for them...

[Wrath of Dagon]

Bioware is just a zombie now.

[Nepenthe]

^Actually I don't remember KotOR being claimed as being the death knell of Bioware.

 

Oh yes it was, dumbed-down sold-out console game.

[Sannom]

I wonder if the comics will cross with the games one of those days, the story in the books also hinted at a future confrontation between the mages and the templars that would change things forever.

[Amentep]

^Actually I don't remember KotOR being claimed as being the death knell of Bioware.

 

Oh yes it was, dumbed-down sold-out console game.

 

I remember that being a complaint, but it was more of a "they sold out their PC fanbase" and not "they're going to crash and burn!" kind of thing.

[Volourn]

"^Actually I don't remember KotOR being claimed as being the death knell of Bioware."

 

Musta missed all the 'BIO betrays their PC 'fans' by making a console game instead of a PC game 9after porting it). Remember that KOTOR was BIO's first game since SS/mdk2 (which most forget) that had a console version and all the talk was 'WAA bio betrayed their 'real' fanbase' etc., etc. Not to mentioned the complaints about the super easy combat, about how the C7C sucked, and a whole bunch of stuff. KOTOR was just another line of games that would 'doom' BIO.

[entrerix]

at first I was totally fine with act 3. Two days later I thought about it some more and now think it was really stupid.

 

maybe kaftan will have similar experience?

 

 

I still think that the devs. maybe wanted to make a story ending like the one in the first Fallout game; DA2's ending also seems more open to me than say DA:O's. It certainly seems to leave it up to the player, the gamer to speculate what happens next. As far as the framed story goes, it does rewuire people to think for themselves and to fill in the blanks (the missing parts) themselves. Some people, not all obviosly, do maybe not know how to do this - to fill in the gaps in the story by themself. Because they have learned how to do do this - for various reasons.

 

 

 

i don't see any similarity between the end of fallout 1 and the end of DA2. What am I missing??

[~Di]

I finished the game yersterday. I dont get why people complained about a crappy ending, I thought it was more or less what you might expect. Maybe they should have focused more on Chapter 3 and the ending than all the crap-quests in the first chapter, but this was alright.

 

I finished it last night as well, fully prepared for a ghastly martyr scene ala Fallout 3 and NWN2 (the two worst game endings in my personal gaming history). Instead it was basically your typical kill the end boss(es) thing. The only wtf moment for me was when

I realized that after agonizing the entire game about whether to support the mages or the templars, it bloody well didn't matter because I had to fight both end-game bosses no matter what. So much for "choice matters"!

 

 

The game bugs are brutal. After having to load one particularly contentious boss battle and fight it three times only to have the game crash in the cutscene (which immediately started without a save opportunity), I finally gave up late in Act 3 and set the game up for a cheat mode. Any time I had to redo a brutal battle after 20 minutes of fighting, the words "runscript killallhostiles" on the reloads were music to my tired fingers.

 

That said, I really loved the game... the game BioWare was trying to give us, that is. I loved the quests... no huge, dreary, hours-long dungeons... I loved the characters, I loved the setting, I loved the story, I loved the romance that my character chose. I didn't love the fact that since I hadn't bought the DA:O Awakenings DLC, I was unable to

do at least one significant quest and couldn't get the final armor piece for Varric.

Now that's just rude.

 

Today Chris Priestly said that a patch with over 100 fixes has just been sent to EA/Sony for certification. That means we will be seeing a significant patch... eventually! Even with all its bugs, I really loved the game overall. I'm one of those people who spends a lot of time micro-managing my companions' skills and upgrading their equipment, plus I did every single quest available to me. All in all, I got nearly 90 hours of game time in! (All right, all right... probably 10-20 hours of that was reloading, refighting, and figuring out bug workarounds.) So all you haters, neener-neener, at least I had fun and got my money's worth!

Edited April 2, 2011 by ~Di

[GreasyDogMeat]

I imported a save file from Witch Hunt with a character who had gone through Awakenings. The game listed a bunch of choices from Origins, but I didn't see any from Awakenings.

 

Are there any save elements read from Awakenings that effect DA 2? I didn't notice any personally.

[~Di]

I imported a save file from Witch Hunt with a character who had gone through Awakenings. The game listed a bunch of choices from Origins, but I didn't see any from Awakenings.

 

Are there any save elements read from Awakenings that effect DA 2? I didn't notice any personally.

 

From what I'm seeing on the forums and in the strategy guide, there are certain quests that aren't offered unless your DA:O save game including Awakenings. And one of those quests

"Finding Nathanial" isn't availble to non-Awakenings game imports, and that quest is the only way to get Varric's final armor upgrade.

Also, I get the idea that Anders has significant dialog about goings-on during Awakenings that isn't available otherwise.

Edited April 2, 2011 by ~Di

[GreasyDogMeat]

From what I'm seeing on the forums and in the strategy guide, there are certain quests that aren't offered unless your DA:O save game including Awakenings. And one of those quests

"Finding Nathanial" isn't availble to non-Awakenings game imports, and that quest is the only way to get Varric's final armor upgrade.

Also, I get the idea that Anders has significant dialog about goings-on during Awakenings that isn't available otherwise.

Dammit, I didn't get that. Odd that it kept all of my Origin choices from a Witch Hunt import, but no Awakenings choices despite going through Awakenings.

 

Unfortunately I only had a Witch Hunt & Golems of Angarrak save. At least it read my Origins choices from the Witch Hunt save.

 

I'm in the process of replaying Origins with a different character so I'll make sure to have Origins and Awakenings ending saves. I'm kind of in hiatus from Origins though as I don't really feel like replaying DA 2 again until it receives a patch. While they can't fix the repeating dungeons/caves, hopefully they will fix some of the quest bugs and add auto-attack to the console version. DA 2 killed my hand and I'm in no hurry to mash the A-button a million more times.

[Apatia]

From what I'm seeing on the forums and in the strategy guide, there are certain quests that aren't offered unless your DA:O save game including Awakenings. And one of those quests

"Finding Nathanial" isn't availble to non-Awakenings game imports, and that quest is the only way to get Varric's final armor upgrade.

Also, I get the idea that Anders has significant dialog about goings-on during Awakenings that isn't available otherwise.

Dammit, I didn't get that. Odd that it kept all of my Origin choices from a Witch Hunt import, but no Awakenings choices despite going through Awakenings.

 

Unfortunately I only had a Witch Hunt & Golems of Angarrak save. At least it read my Origins choices from the Witch Hunt save.

 

I'm in the process of replaying Origins with a different character so I'll make sure to have Origins and Awakenings ending saves. I'm kind of in hiatus from Origins though as I don't really feel like replaying DA 2 again until it receives a patch. While they can't fix the repeating dungeons/caves, hopefully they will fix some of the quest bugs and add auto-attack to the console version. DA 2 killed my hand and I'm in no hurry to mash the A-button a million more times.

 

Save importing is bugged. I imported Witch Hunt save and majority of my choices in DAO and Awakening were imported wrong. Amaranthine burned even if I saved it, I didn't romance anyone even if I did, "Finding Nathaniel" quest doesn't trigger (in Act 2, if you get the quest from the dwarf to find his missing sons from The Deep Roads, then you won't get Nathaniel quest) etc. You can check your plot flags with console command "runscript zz_vault_debug". I read from Bioware forums that it's Awakening that is causing all the save import problems.

[GreasyDogMeat]

Save importing is bugged. I imported Witch Hunt save and majority of my choices in DAO and Awakening were imported wrong. Amaranthine burned even if I saved it, I didn't romance anyone even if I did, "Finding Nathaniel" quest doesn't trigger (in Act 2, if you get the quest from the dwarf to find his missing sons from The Deep Roads, then you won't get Nathaniel quest) etc. You can check your plot flags with console command "runscript zz_vault_debug". I read from Bioware forums that it's Awakening that is causing all the save import problems.

Sigh... another reason I think I'll hold off finishing DA 1 until DA 2 is patched. The most frustrating so far has been the Merril quest bug as I was actually interested in seeing how her quest ends and it just goes fubar.

[Nepenthe]

The game bugs are brutal.

You are still playing it on a single-core machine in spite of the dual core minspec?

 

Coz, running it on a dual core win XP rig (and thus being limited to DX 9 anyway) it has been about as solid as any PC game I've played in the past 10 years.

 

The scripting and import bugs, OTOH, are holding me off from starting my third playthrough. Even though I'm hankering for one really badly.

[MrBrown]

I imported an Awakening save, and all my stuff imported correctly... I did check the import flags with the console, and some of them were wrong, but whether this is because of a bug or because those flags are not used anyway, hard to say. Until someone digs deeper into the files, that is.

 

BTW, the game also imports stuff from DA:O DLC, most importantly a quest from Warden's keep.

 

Also, FYI, the game currently doesn't import anything from With Hunt or Golems of Amgarrakrkrkarkrk. That isn't a bug.

[meomao]

I imported a save file from Witch Hunt with a character who had gone through Awakenings. The game listed a bunch of choices from Origins, but I didn't see any from Awakenings.

 

Are there any save elements read from Awakenings that effect DA 2? I didn't notice any personally.

 

From what I'm seeing on the forums and in the strategy guide, there are certain quests that aren't offered unless your DA:O save game including Awakenings. And one of those quests

"Finding Nathanial" isn't availble to non-Awakenings game imports, and that quest is the only way to get Varric's final armor upgrade.

Also, I get the idea that Anders has significant dialog about goings-on during Awakenings that isn't available otherwise.

 

Even if you have Awakeing (as I do) you got that quest only if you spared the Architect at the end of DA:A. So, I do not get it too, cause I killed the poor thing. You get the Fool's Gold quest oly if the Architect is dead.

 

Btw, I think that there is a bug and that in case that you do not make the Finding Nathaniel quest, you should receive the last armour upgrade for Varric in his last personal quest. Only, it doesn't trigeer. Nothing that Vaddiin could not solve with developer consolle :D.

Edited April 2, 2011 by meomao

[Volourn]

I also believe you miss out on the Finding nathaniel quest if you do the 'find 3 dwarf explorers in deep roads' quest in ch2. I spared both Architect and Nathaniel in Awakenings and didn't get the quest because of that supposedly.

[Nepenthe]

I imported an Awakening save, and all my stuff imported correctly... I did check the import flags with the console, and some of them were wrong, but whether this is because of a bug or because those flags are not used anyway, hard to say. Until someone digs deeper into the files, that is.

 

BTW, the game also imports stuff from DA:O DLC, most importantly a quest from Warden's keep.

 

Also, FYI, the game currently doesn't import anything from With Hunt or Golems of Amgarrakrkrkarkrk. That isn't a bug.

I had the end status of my Witch Hunt playthrough at least mentioned in the "key decisions list".

 

The problem is that some of the DA2 calls are for approval ratings in the origins savefiles, which get nuked when a character is transferred into DLC. I hope that they let somebody who is not a complete idiot give this a rethink and alter it in the patch.

[Serrano]

key decisions list?

[Nepenthe]

key decisions list?

At least on the PC version (oh the irony) you can view "key decisions" in the save file you are importing. Or key details. Or like some stuff picked out. For me that included the end decision of Witch Hunt.

[Serrano]

Thanks, I hadn't spotted that tab on the import options.

Edited April 2, 2011 by Serrano

[GhostofAnakin]

Granted, I wasn't expecting anything earth shattering, but I honestly can't remember any differences between playing a "default" game and importing my decisions from one of my Origins games. Other than the

Nathanial Howe quest

, is anything really affected in a noticeable way if you import?