Stinger
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2011
- Messages
- 1,366
Hi guys, earlier when MotA (you know what, not going to use this acronym, reminds me of an expansion that actually did fix up all the major flaws of the OC 
) was announced I offered to suffer through it to review the game. Here's my review...hopefully it's Codex standard:
Earlier this year Bioware released Dragon Age 2 to mixed reviews. Several complaints and critiques were made about the game regarding its lack of choices and consequences, poorly designed combat, excessive streamlining of the character system, inventory and many other features. Since then Bioware and EA’s responses have ranged from justifying the removal of features from Origins because it was busted to defending the changes but taking the feedback into consideration to EA being flat out disappointed in the fans as opposed to the other way around.
Following the launch of Dragon Age 2, the first dlc Legacy was released to equally mixed reviews and whether or not it had actually taken fan feedback into account was debatable.
Now the second dlc Mark of the Assassin is available for download featuring a character voiced by Felicia Day.
Story
"If we're going to offer you a decision, it should matter...Addressable, but not within a DLC, as they are pretty self-contained items."
Mike Laidlaw summarising whether the dlc will be worth it
Mark of the Assassin begins with Tallis (voiced by Felicia Day) an elven rogue recruiting the help of resident Champion and Awesome->Button connecter Hawke to steal a Jewel known as the Heart of Many from an Orlesian Noble. The initial premise has many similarities to the Stolen Memories dlc from Mass Effect 2 and this is further emphasised by Tallis’s similarly snarky personality and her ‘Infiltrator’ Specialisation.
While the overarching plot follows the same structure as Stolen Memories, some of the smaller details are altered. Part of the dlc focuses on the lore of the Qunari in an attempt to flesh out the race a bit more. The lore itself is fairly interesting and does a fair bit to justify the presence of the Qunari in Act 2 of the original campaign.
Like Stolen Memories, the early sequences of the campaign feature a party that allows the player to explore around and chat to the various attendees. These opening sequences have tendency towards humour and whether or not this humour works for you depends on whether or not you find a character saying a variant on “Heavy risks....but the prize” hilarious or irritatingly self referential and smug. Unfortunately (or not) much of this type of ‘witty’ humour pervades the campaign.
The opening sequences are also filled with several cameos from well known characters. These cameos largely come across as cheap fan service as they are only a few lines long and do nothing for the story apart from nods to the fans.
From left to right: 1) A ‘hilarious’ shout out to one of the most cringeworthy lines of Mass Effect 2, 2) Leliana returns once again to remind the player of what little impact their choices have, 3) Oh Christ not you two agai-TEAGANN!
On the choices and consequences aspect of the campaign, while the game does acknowledge some of your actions in the original campaign (more specifically whether or not you have dealt with the Qunari and how you did this) it’s mainly extra ‘flavour’ rather than any meaningful consequences. Within the campaign itself the dlc presents you with the illusion of options, only to be railroaded into one path regardless of the options you take. Sadly it seems Bioware is more interested in cracking wise and featuring cameos than focusing on an interesting storyline with significant and meaningful choices and consequences.
On the other hand, one thing Bioware has committed to is a significant amount of dialogue and banter for your party. It's a nice touch considering Mass Effect 2's dlc had the party members acting oddly silent.
Combat
"The game is challenging...but the challenge...comes from the sheer numbers of enemies zerging your party and from that second wave of enemies spawning in all around you, literally out of thin air in most cases, which is the laziest design possible."
Vault Dweller on Dragon Age 2’s combat
"I am amused when people note that waves are "gone" from Legacy. They're actually there, just done much better. So, yes, the bad waves are gone. Still more work to do, but a good start."
Mike Laidlaw on how Bioware responds to feedback
Combat is largely the same as it was in the original game. The lazy wave encounter design is prevalent in almost all the combat encounters and the encounters themselves lack any variety. Instead, as always the encounters are made up of disposable trash mobs filled multiple copies of the same generic enemy with hilariously bloated health bars causing the player to press a button many times for anything even vaguely awesome to happen.
Above, Bioware’s opinion on ‘good’ wave design
It’s difficult to understand what Mr Laidlaw believes were the bad waves as the wave encounters are exactly the same as the original but without the ridiculous animations (i.e. enemies run out of doors rather than parachuting from the sky).
Notably there are two bosses in the game that spawn more than 3 waves of trash mobs before they can actually be killed. The final boss in particular takes a page from the high dragon of the original campaign and frequently climbs up to an inaccessible rock while he fires projectiles and reinforcements arrive to waste your time.
At no point in this long and arduous encounter, or any encounter in the dlc, did the combat feel even remotely tactical or entertaining. It was instead a test of patience rather than strategy.
While the heavily flawed character and loot system certainly couldn’t have been salvaged in the 2-3 hour dlc, the encounter design could have used a lot more work and it’s simply poor effort on Bioware’s part that they haven’t even attempted to address this.
Puzzles and Other Gimmicks
Mark of the Assassin features two puzzle sections and introduces a stealth section into the campaign. The puzzles are very simplistic and add little to the game.
The first puzzle involves Tallis and Hawke stepping on a series of plates to unlock gates. Since this section only has two characters available the ‘puzzle’ is nothing more than one character opening one plate allowing the second character to go through the newly opened room to step on the next plate. It’s linear, poses barely any challenge and simply pads out the game.
The second puzzle is more substantial. Now, with all 3 companions available, the characters can each collect a single coloured rune to access the respectively coloured doors. Some colours can be mixed to gain additional runes.
While the puzzle mechanics are potentially interesting, the puzzle itself is poorly executed as it is still very linear and never attempts to build up the difficulty. It’s a far cry from, for example, the simple, yet challenging bridge puzzle in the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest in Dragon Age Origins.
Also, this puzzle takes place in what should be the dramatic escape sequence and the poor pacing and lack of challenge ultimately makes the puzzles feel like nothing more than distracting filler.
Mark of the Assassin’s stealth sequences are similarly shallow and badly executed. As Hawke and Tallis break into the Chateau they are treated to a section consisting of sneaking around the guards to avoid a lethal approach. In stealth mode Hawke has two options, they can throw a rock to distract the guard or knock them out temporarily. Tallis in the meantime conveniently teleports past each section when Hawke is done.
The guards aren’t exactly challenging to sneak past
While the stealth option is appreciated, the stupidity of the AI breaks the sequence. Even ignoring the poor perception and simple AI paths (which is understandable in a game that isn’t focused around stealth), when guards are knocked out they later regain consciousness and simply assume they’ve fallen asleep from boredom or other similarly petty excuses, somehow oblivious to their head trauma. Throwing rocks causes guards to walk over to the stone and crouch in front of it, somehow amused by the stone for several seconds as Hawke sneaks past unnoticed.
The killing blow to these sections, however, is that detection is meaningless. Rather than tripping any alarms or alerting guards to trigger combat, getting detected simply causes Hawke to teleport back to the start of the room as Tallis scolds them to be more careful. Thus, rather than properly punishing the player for messing up or giving any kind of adrenalin rush for fear of detection (like a good stealth sequence would do), stealth is just a forced inconvenience. Finally, the following sequences have Hawke and their party slaughter their way through endless waves of Prosper's guards, making the whole 'non-lethal' approach utterly pointless.
However the stealth mechanics themselves have potential and they’re certainly an improvement over the stealth mechanics of the old Infinity Engine days (i.e. enter sneak and let dice rolls decide whether you’ve been noticed as you stand right in front of the guards). If Bioware wants to pursue this they need to make stealth a more integrated component into the quest design and offer it as an alternative approach to a quest for certain builds rather than a forced, linear sequence. Sadly, given the tendency of Bioware quests to be combat-centric and dialogue skills as just a flavour option the idea that stealth might be used as a viable approach to quests for sneaky characters is highly unlikely.
Felicia Day
Want to date that Avatar? 90% of Bioware fans say YES! Among other things...
Ms Day deserves her own section as she is the primary selling point of the campaign. For the uninitiated, Felicia Day is an actress and independent film maker who had roles in Buffy and “Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog”. In addition to voice work, she also has her own Web Series “The Guild” and “Dragon Age: Redemption” which has Tallis as the main protagonist (First episode available here to judge in your own time).
Both in the web series and in this dlc Tallis comes across as a character blatantly pandering to Felicia’s ‘nerd-base’. Her opening scene in the dlc consists of her singlehandedly slaughtering a group of assassins as the protagonists stare gaping. Needless to say the dlc and the web series both feel the need to constantly reinforce that Tallis is a ‘badass’, strong, independent female rather than allowing the player or viewer to decide this based on her character.
It’s telling of Bioware’s audience that one of the first comments made about the announcement of the dlc was whether or not Tallis would be a love interest (according to Bioware she isn’t) and this is reflected in the fact that almost every dialogue sequence with Tallis allows a flirting option.
Turns out Bioware doesn’t consider it a Romance if you don’t have passionate, tastefully done sex
Ultimately Tallis and Felicia Day’s role in the dlc comes across as nothing more than a cheap marketing ploy. This isn’t a criticism of Felicia Day herself but how her status is used for pandering to the fans.
Conclusion
Summed up in one word, Mark of the Assassin is Gimmicky. Rather than providing an interesting storyline with proper choices and consequences, the writing instead is made up of overly smug, self referential humour featuring cheap cameos from well known characters and your choices are as meaningless as they were in the OC. Rather than attempting to fix up the combat, the game provides a series of shallow puzzles and stealth sequences.
Rather than providing an entertaining dlc that addresses the feedback of the OC, Mark of the Assassin features a somewhat romanceable Felicia Day.
The dlc is too preoccupied with pleasing the fans with cheap tricks rather than offering genuinely interesting content. Either Dragon Age 2 is unsalvageable (in which case write off the idea that any other potential dlc will be good) or Bioware is not interested in addressing said feedback (in which case write off Dragon Age 3 as well).
Mark of the Assassin is only worth considering if you were interested in the highly flawed original campaign as it’s just more of the same with meaningless distractions.
) was announced I offered to suffer through it to review the game. Here's my review...hopefully it's Codex standard:Earlier this year Bioware released Dragon Age 2 to mixed reviews. Several complaints and critiques were made about the game regarding its lack of choices and consequences, poorly designed combat, excessive streamlining of the character system, inventory and many other features. Since then Bioware and EA’s responses have ranged from justifying the removal of features from Origins because it was busted to defending the changes but taking the feedback into consideration to EA being flat out disappointed in the fans as opposed to the other way around.
Following the launch of Dragon Age 2, the first dlc Legacy was released to equally mixed reviews and whether or not it had actually taken fan feedback into account was debatable.
Now the second dlc Mark of the Assassin is available for download featuring a character voiced by Felicia Day.
Story
"If we're going to offer you a decision, it should matter...Addressable, but not within a DLC, as they are pretty self-contained items."
Mike Laidlaw summarising whether the dlc will be worth it
Mark of the Assassin begins with Tallis (voiced by Felicia Day) an elven rogue recruiting the help of resident Champion and Awesome->Button connecter Hawke to steal a Jewel known as the Heart of Many from an Orlesian Noble. The initial premise has many similarities to the Stolen Memories dlc from Mass Effect 2 and this is further emphasised by Tallis’s similarly snarky personality and her ‘Infiltrator’ Specialisation.
While the overarching plot follows the same structure as Stolen Memories, some of the smaller details are altered. Part of the dlc focuses on the lore of the Qunari in an attempt to flesh out the race a bit more. The lore itself is fairly interesting and does a fair bit to justify the presence of the Qunari in Act 2 of the original campaign.
Like Stolen Memories, the early sequences of the campaign feature a party that allows the player to explore around and chat to the various attendees. These opening sequences have tendency towards humour and whether or not this humour works for you depends on whether or not you find a character saying a variant on “Heavy risks....but the prize” hilarious or irritatingly self referential and smug. Unfortunately (or not) much of this type of ‘witty’ humour pervades the campaign.
The opening sequences are also filled with several cameos from well known characters. These cameos largely come across as cheap fan service as they are only a few lines long and do nothing for the story apart from nods to the fans.
From left to right: 1) A ‘hilarious’ shout out to one of the most cringeworthy lines of Mass Effect 2, 2) Leliana returns once again to remind the player of what little impact their choices have, 3) Oh Christ not you two agai-TEAGANN!
On the choices and consequences aspect of the campaign, while the game does acknowledge some of your actions in the original campaign (more specifically whether or not you have dealt with the Qunari and how you did this) it’s mainly extra ‘flavour’ rather than any meaningful consequences. Within the campaign itself the dlc presents you with the illusion of options, only to be railroaded into one path regardless of the options you take. Sadly it seems Bioware is more interested in cracking wise and featuring cameos than focusing on an interesting storyline with significant and meaningful choices and consequences.
On the other hand, one thing Bioware has committed to is a significant amount of dialogue and banter for your party. It's a nice touch considering Mass Effect 2's dlc had the party members acting oddly silent.
Combat
"The game is challenging...but the challenge...comes from the sheer numbers of enemies zerging your party and from that second wave of enemies spawning in all around you, literally out of thin air in most cases, which is the laziest design possible."
Vault Dweller on Dragon Age 2’s combat
"I am amused when people note that waves are "gone" from Legacy. They're actually there, just done much better. So, yes, the bad waves are gone. Still more work to do, but a good start."
Mike Laidlaw on how Bioware responds to feedback
Combat is largely the same as it was in the original game. The lazy wave encounter design is prevalent in almost all the combat encounters and the encounters themselves lack any variety. Instead, as always the encounters are made up of disposable trash mobs filled multiple copies of the same generic enemy with hilariously bloated health bars causing the player to press a button many times for anything even vaguely awesome to happen.
Above, Bioware’s opinion on ‘good’ wave design
It’s difficult to understand what Mr Laidlaw believes were the bad waves as the wave encounters are exactly the same as the original but without the ridiculous animations (i.e. enemies run out of doors rather than parachuting from the sky).
Notably there are two bosses in the game that spawn more than 3 waves of trash mobs before they can actually be killed. The final boss in particular takes a page from the high dragon of the original campaign and frequently climbs up to an inaccessible rock while he fires projectiles and reinforcements arrive to waste your time.
At no point in this long and arduous encounter, or any encounter in the dlc, did the combat feel even remotely tactical or entertaining. It was instead a test of patience rather than strategy.
While the heavily flawed character and loot system certainly couldn’t have been salvaged in the 2-3 hour dlc, the encounter design could have used a lot more work and it’s simply poor effort on Bioware’s part that they haven’t even attempted to address this.
Puzzles and Other Gimmicks
Mark of the Assassin features two puzzle sections and introduces a stealth section into the campaign. The puzzles are very simplistic and add little to the game.
The first puzzle involves Tallis and Hawke stepping on a series of plates to unlock gates. Since this section only has two characters available the ‘puzzle’ is nothing more than one character opening one plate allowing the second character to go through the newly opened room to step on the next plate. It’s linear, poses barely any challenge and simply pads out the game.
The second puzzle is more substantial. Now, with all 3 companions available, the characters can each collect a single coloured rune to access the respectively coloured doors. Some colours can be mixed to gain additional runes.
While the puzzle mechanics are potentially interesting, the puzzle itself is poorly executed as it is still very linear and never attempts to build up the difficulty. It’s a far cry from, for example, the simple, yet challenging bridge puzzle in the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest in Dragon Age Origins.
Also, this puzzle takes place in what should be the dramatic escape sequence and the poor pacing and lack of challenge ultimately makes the puzzles feel like nothing more than distracting filler.
Mark of the Assassin’s stealth sequences are similarly shallow and badly executed. As Hawke and Tallis break into the Chateau they are treated to a section consisting of sneaking around the guards to avoid a lethal approach. In stealth mode Hawke has two options, they can throw a rock to distract the guard or knock them out temporarily. Tallis in the meantime conveniently teleports past each section when Hawke is done.
The guards aren’t exactly challenging to sneak past
While the stealth option is appreciated, the stupidity of the AI breaks the sequence. Even ignoring the poor perception and simple AI paths (which is understandable in a game that isn’t focused around stealth), when guards are knocked out they later regain consciousness and simply assume they’ve fallen asleep from boredom or other similarly petty excuses, somehow oblivious to their head trauma. Throwing rocks causes guards to walk over to the stone and crouch in front of it, somehow amused by the stone for several seconds as Hawke sneaks past unnoticed.
The killing blow to these sections, however, is that detection is meaningless. Rather than tripping any alarms or alerting guards to trigger combat, getting detected simply causes Hawke to teleport back to the start of the room as Tallis scolds them to be more careful. Thus, rather than properly punishing the player for messing up or giving any kind of adrenalin rush for fear of detection (like a good stealth sequence would do), stealth is just a forced inconvenience. Finally, the following sequences have Hawke and their party slaughter their way through endless waves of Prosper's guards, making the whole 'non-lethal' approach utterly pointless.
However the stealth mechanics themselves have potential and they’re certainly an improvement over the stealth mechanics of the old Infinity Engine days (i.e. enter sneak and let dice rolls decide whether you’ve been noticed as you stand right in front of the guards). If Bioware wants to pursue this they need to make stealth a more integrated component into the quest design and offer it as an alternative approach to a quest for certain builds rather than a forced, linear sequence. Sadly, given the tendency of Bioware quests to be combat-centric and dialogue skills as just a flavour option the idea that stealth might be used as a viable approach to quests for sneaky characters is highly unlikely.
Felicia Day
Want to date that Avatar? 90% of Bioware fans say YES! Among other things...
Ms Day deserves her own section as she is the primary selling point of the campaign. For the uninitiated, Felicia Day is an actress and independent film maker who had roles in Buffy and “Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog”. In addition to voice work, she also has her own Web Series “The Guild” and “Dragon Age: Redemption” which has Tallis as the main protagonist (First episode available here to judge in your own time).
Both in the web series and in this dlc Tallis comes across as a character blatantly pandering to Felicia’s ‘nerd-base’. Her opening scene in the dlc consists of her singlehandedly slaughtering a group of assassins as the protagonists stare gaping. Needless to say the dlc and the web series both feel the need to constantly reinforce that Tallis is a ‘badass’, strong, independent female rather than allowing the player or viewer to decide this based on her character.
It’s telling of Bioware’s audience that one of the first comments made about the announcement of the dlc was whether or not Tallis would be a love interest (according to Bioware she isn’t) and this is reflected in the fact that almost every dialogue sequence with Tallis allows a flirting option.
Turns out Bioware doesn’t consider it a Romance if you don’t have passionate, tastefully done sex
Ultimately Tallis and Felicia Day’s role in the dlc comes across as nothing more than a cheap marketing ploy. This isn’t a criticism of Felicia Day herself but how her status is used for pandering to the fans.
Conclusion
Summed up in one word, Mark of the Assassin is Gimmicky. Rather than providing an interesting storyline with proper choices and consequences, the writing instead is made up of overly smug, self referential humour featuring cheap cameos from well known characters and your choices are as meaningless as they were in the OC. Rather than attempting to fix up the combat, the game provides a series of shallow puzzles and stealth sequences.
Rather than providing an entertaining dlc that addresses the feedback of the OC, Mark of the Assassin features a somewhat romanceable Felicia Day.
The dlc is too preoccupied with pleasing the fans with cheap tricks rather than offering genuinely interesting content. Either Dragon Age 2 is unsalvageable (in which case write off the idea that any other potential dlc will be good) or Bioware is not interested in addressing said feedback (in which case write off Dragon Age 3 as well).
Mark of the Assassin is only worth considering if you were interested in the highly flawed original campaign as it’s just more of the same with meaningless distractions.
pretty hard.
Forced stealth sections with binary pass/fail outcomes are so early 00s...
