Dragon Age: Inquisition

[Hurlshort]

Actually I'd say playing a made made a huge difference in DA2. The story was way more engaging that way for me.  I tried the other two classes and barely got into it.

[licketysplit]

I can only hope it restores the series to it's former glory, even if it was short lived.

Dragon Age II was the most disappointing game in the past couple of years, especially wth me being a major fan of the first game.

I actually got to fed up with the sequel and never finished it.

 

I'll give Inquisition a chance, but considering BioWare's recent endeavors, I'm not expecting much.

 

DA:O was a generic, padded out bore in my humble opinion. The only saving grace was it's characters. The fantasy genre doesn't need another Dragon Age. It needs GRRM and Witcher, and hopefully PE from Obsidian.

[Zoraptor]

DAO was 10-20% too long in just about every respect and rather too generic, but it was a good framework and basis for an improved sequel. Hopefully with the increased time DA3 (do I have to call it DAI now?) will be a bit more well balanced towards keeping the good bits and improving the poorer bits than DA2 though.

[alanschu]

 

 

do I have to call it DAI now?

 

Yes.  It's the law.

[Orogun01]

Just for my edification, what do people consider to be the good bits from DA2?

[tajerio]

I'm one of maybe 50 people in the world to play through DA2 five times, and I was able to keep playing it so many times because I really enjoyed the combat and the story.  I thought that combat in DA2 was much superior to that of DA:O in pace, and the tactical element was still very much there at Hard difficulty--in fact I thought the combat was tactically superior, thanks to combinations, to that of DA:O, which was often agonizingly slow and lacked variation.  Could have done without the waves of reinforcements though.  As for the story, I thought it was refreshing to get a story in which the goal isn't "save the world from giant apocalyptic threat, and oh by the way it's all on you."  Instead, in DA2 your character gradually gains agency and the scope of your decisions widens, but you're never saving the world.  Frankly, you're buggering it.  Chapter 2 is definitely the best part of the story, particularly since the qunari are philosophically fascinating enemies.  The mage-templar conflict could have been excellent as well, but I don't think BioWare did a great job of presenting both sides with equal moral weight.

 

That said, I am quite biased since I probably liked DA2 more than some of the devs did, but that's what I liked at least.

[licketysplit]

Just for my edification, what do people consider to be the good bits from DA2?

 

The part where you uninstall it.

[Serrano]

Just for my edification, what do people consider to be the good bits from DA2?

 

I liked the storytelling techniques that Bioware were trying in DA2 and I enjoyed the cast of characters. 

 

I enjoyed playing a character with a history and personality beyond just what I was deciding for him. It was always great picking a one or two word response in the dialogue wheel and getting a really great line from Hawke that I wasn't expecting and it was also fun seeing Hawke's overall personality and the way other characters saw him be moulded by the the dialogue responses that I had chosen.   

 

I thought the time jumps were a great way to tell a story, I know that wasn't popular with everybody but I loved getting through a chapter doing something big and dramatic like the Deep Roads or the Quanari attack and then fast-forwarding, seeing how Hawke, the rest of the cast and the city in general had grown and what they were doing and how everyone had moved on after those events. I enjoyed the longer story arcs for characters like Anders and Cullen who's stories really took advantage of the five year timespan. I liked the little scenes and small touches that made the companions feel like they had their own lives as well. They had some really good storylines in DA2 both in the main and side quests, a lot of them felt underdeveloped though which is a pity. 

[Oerwinde]

Just for my edification, what do people consider to be the good bits from DA2?

The Qunari stuff from acts 1 and 2 I thought was great. After that's resolved, act 3 is just meh. If they had cut out the mages vs templar story and focused on the conflict with the Qunari it might have been a better game.

 

Also, kudos to Bioware for making a character the PC actually really wants to kill, and lets us kill them. Anders was a high point in Awakenings, but it sure was satisfying killing him in DA2.

 

Also Varric.

Edited August 2, 2013 by Oerwinde

[Nepenthe]

I didn't get the feeling of DA2 being ambitious, but more slapshod. Two thirds of the major plotlines are still very much in the Bioware vein. If we're to look at the family angle as them avoiding the standard plots, then we should similarly give credit to DAO for the Elf and Dwarf plots. But the city of Kirkwall had a nasty habit of breaking out into wars that threatened theentire region.

 

 

I was talking about the structure, mostly, which should qualify as "experimental" for Bio even if you don't view it as ambitious (ie. blame it on the necessity to recycle areas). Personally found what they tried to do with combat ambitious, even if it didn't work out that great, in the end. Still greatly prefer it to the sluggish DAO combat, but...

 

I lost my DA saves when I deleted my xp partition in a hissy late last year, so I'm slowly working at getting my saves back in shape. Slowly being the operative word, since DAO feels like a sluggish grind in a way no game I've ever played (ok, maybe MUDs back in the day) felt.

[Majek]

but it sure was satisfying killing him in DA2.

Not enough. It should have been possible to torture him, chop him to pieces or blow him up. :/

[Gfted1]

I have a professional curiosity to know what went so wrong in DA2's development that the end result looks so appalling.

Wasn't DA2 a product of "data mining" DAO? Or am I thinking of the ME series?

[Guest Slinky]

I sure hope its ME you are thinking, since IMO ME2 was much better than ME1.

 

DA2 on the other hand..

[Monte Carlo]

 

I have a professional curiosity to know what went so wrong in DA2's development that the end result looks so appalling.

Wasn't DA2 a product of "data mining" DAO? Or am I thinking of the ME series?

 

 

I remember the DA2 devs quoting the data they took from DA1 to justify the epic dumbing-down in DA2 and all the other ****ty design decisions.

[lobotomy42]

I never actually hated DA 2 and found that some of the concerns people were howling about seemed fairly minor to me. Having a family structure for the main character really helped with the assimilation into the setting and the story. But the combat seemed a little too twitchy and uninteresting, while the city mostly felt like an empty shell. I played it through a second time as a mage and it was more enjoyable. I'd rate it as slightly above average.

 

What bothered me about Dragon Age 2 was the sense I had of being rail-roaded everywhere.  I get that "exploration" is not real in any story-driven RPG, and certainly not in a Bioware RPG, and I'm fine with that.  But in Dragon Age Origins managed to preserve the illusion of it.  In Dragon Age 2, I was shepherded from one cutscene to next without really understanding why or deciding to, and often stumbling into unrelated plots (and their cutscenes) before I could blink.  The effect was watching a lot of people talk about a lot of different things in a very jilted and confusing way, breaking all illusion.  While my player character just seemed to agree with everything everyone said, regardless of how I felt about anything.  This improved a bit before the end, and I eventually found the "Dragon Age" roots underneath the surface, but you have to really dig for them. 

 

I think this could have been alleviated by making the quick-travel map a little less convenient, or least optional.  And maybe not having the cutscenes trigger QUITE so aggressively.  I miss the "camp" from Origins.  If nothing else, it signals a "Hey, I'm ready to talk to people about some stuff now" and therefore requires a small amount of player buy-in.

[GhostofAnakin]

One thing is for certain; I hope that any sort of "grand" or "majestic" cities we come across in DA3 (calling it that just for Alan) are actually, you know, impressive.  Unlike DAO, where the talk was of how impressive Denerim was supposed to be, until getting there and seeing a tiny little village market with maybe a dozen people milling about.

[alanschu]

Engine wise it should certainly be more possible.  Eclipse was getting pretty long in the tooth.

[GhostofAnakin]

And please, no parachuting-from-the-rooftops bad guys this time.

 

Basically, I just want them to combine the best of DAO and DA2, while subtracting the worst of each game.  Is that too much to ask? 

[HoonDing]

I couldn't stand Anders in Awakenings, but I didn't dislike him in DA2. My hatred was reserved for Bonnie Prince Charlie. So satisfying to see his outrage after the Chantry literally blew up in his face.

[NOK222]

I couldn't stand Anders in Awakenings, but I didn't dislike him in DA2. My hatred was reserved for Bonnie Prince Charlie. So satisfying to see his outrage after the Chantry literally blew up in his face.

MAKER NOOOOO

[Maria Caliban]

Just for my edification, what do people consider to be the good bits from DA2?

Oh boy.

• I liked the voice protagonist.
• I liked majority of the companions, and even those I didn’t like were interesting.
• I liked that the majority of the story wasn’t about an ancient evil or a joining a powerful group.
• I liked that Hawke wasn’t widely respected until she became the Champion – meaning the PC had to work for it, even if there was no way to avoid it.
• I liked that they trimmed the mage spell list.
• I liked that they added class combos.
• I like that they reduced the need for alpha strike.
• I like that they had spell/power webs instead of spell/power trees. Effort was put into removing ‘speed bump’ spell/powers and they gave you the option to pick a new power or to upgrade an existing one.
• I thought it was much easier to manage aggression for a fighter.
• I liked that each companion got their own, unique specialization.
• I liked that when I changed armor, the majority of time it wasn’t the same model with a different color.
• I liked they changed the color scheme from Origins.
• I liked that the Deep Roads was not an endless, brown colored tunnel.
• I liked that they decided to focus on one city and its people.
• I liked the Qunari arc.
• I liked that the Qunari and elves were more visually distinct than ‘big humans’ and ‘slender humans.’
• I liked that the companions had iconic looks.
• I liked that they each had their own sidequest.
• I thought the friendship/rivalry system was better overall than the friendship system.

I could go on and double the size of this list, but that’s probably enough for now.

[Bos_hybrid]

Meh is my opinion on DA2.

 

I sit in the middle, don't particularly understand the vitriolic hate, nor the defending or praising of it. To me it's distinctly average. While I do prefer the original and Awakenings to DA2 I don't just want to see a revert to them.

 

Still waiting for actual information about DA:I, it seems absurd that we still haven't seen a gameplay video. All we've seen is an in engine trailer. And rather than ask where is the gameplay? People bitched about Morrigan's facial features. *Sigh.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

I sure hope its ME you are thinking, since IMO ME2 was much better than ME1.

 

 

Oh god no.

[Maria Caliban]

Wasn't DA2 a product of "data mining" DAO? Or am I thinking of the ME series?

Telemetry/data mining/analytics informed both ME 2 and DA II.

 

For example, Christina Norman noted that about 80% of ME 1 players picked a soldier, so when they went to design combat for ME 2, they spent a lot of time making sure that class played well.

 

David Gaider has noted several times that only 5% of players picked a dwarf (3% dwarf noble, 2% dwarf commoner) and… 10% (?) picked elf. For all playthroughs, completed or not. In the next game, Hawke was only human.

 

I don’t think they went ‘People don’t play non-humans so we’re going to cut it.’ I do suspect they went ‘We have X amount of time and making Hawke a non-human would mean more work for the animators and artist. And look, hardly anyone played a non-human. Let’s cut it.’

 

Likewise, David has noted that when the metrics came in, they were surprised by the large percentage of people who opted for a same-sex romance. I don’t think they made all the LIs bi because of that, but it probably informed their decision to do so.

 

But that’s a handful of things. There’s lots of changes in DA II that have nothing to do with datamining (as far as I know ): The change in how darkspawn, Qunari, and elves looked. Removing the ability to change your companion’s armor. Not having the PC be a Warden. Templars dropping from the sky. The limited map selection.

[pmp10]

David Gaider has noted several times that only 5% of players picked a dwarf (3% dwarf noble, 2% dwarf commoner) and… 10% (?) picked elf. For all playthroughs, completed or not. In the next game, Hawke was only human.

 

I don’t think they went ‘People don’t play non-humans so we’re going to cut it.’ I do suspect they went ‘We have X amount of time and making Hawke a non-human would mean more work for the animators and artist. And look, hardly anyone played a non-human. Let’s cut it.’

The same argument could be made for giving players the option to play female character and I'm sure those voice-overs cost a lot as well.

Those decisions are more about maintaining standards and fulfilling expectations.

It's just that expectations of old-school RPG players are no longer very important.