Dreaad
Arcane
I have a suspicious feeling I am going to be brutally attacked or even hunted down and killed in real life for this thread...but. Is there anyone here who thinks that dragon age 2 wasn't terrible?
Before people get the wrong idea, I know, I mean I fucking know, there are some absolutely horrific things about this game! Not limited to but including, repeating areas, very strange art design, terrible loot system, inconsistency with prequel or even with the lore in the game itself, very poor combat system and of course the worst of the lot... the enemies that spawn out of thin air right in front of you thus making all tactics completely irrelevant.
However I recently managed to actually finish this game, after trying for the 5th time. What I found out as I did finish it was that I actually enjoyed certain aspects of it far more than any game in quite a while. In my mind there are some ideas that are implemented extremely well or ideas that were very close to being excellent, which I honestly wish some people would try to recreate in a more palatable game engine.
The three main things that caught my attention were:
1.) The time frame and location. I don't mean the city of Kirkwall itself, but the way the game is set in one location over a period of time (where things happened and the situation changes). It could have been done much better I think, especially in the sense that the changes weren't all that dramatic. But if some used this formula and then over three or four chapters showed how a city/npc's change over time e.g. new districts go up, visually the people around you age and perhaps the political situation shifts around - reacting with your role-playing choices to some degree (even if only cosmetically). This is something I would actually enjoy a whole lot more I think than just another quest over a country side with little stops along the way.
2.) The story itself. By that I am talking about moving away from stories where the world gets saved or destroyed based on alignment *rolls eyes*. I have always enjoyed games far more when the task at hand is only very arbitrarily important, where the choices plus random situations along the way create an interesting world. Games like fallout 1/2/NV, planescape torment, icewind dale, gothic and a bunch of older games whose names I no longer recall...
In Dragon Age 2 I guess you could say that the story is mostly driven by the companions rather than anything else and I think it works relatively well.
3.) The idea of your character being tied into the game world. In this case the fact that you have a family which are more than just "Your mother tells you to go out and explore the world after giving $200, have fun dear!" crap. Obviously this doesn't have to be your family, it can be a clan, or caravan you are with...whatever. But something that just ties you into that world as more than a faceless traveler.
Obviously these things wouldn't work far all RPG's and in fact many people hate hard driven linear stories. There is however a group that do enjoy this type of thing and I think that Dragon Age 2 certainly made some steps in the right direction (I was also surprised at how much quite good content was hidden away in fairly sneaky side quests).
Before people get the wrong idea, I know, I mean I fucking know, there are some absolutely horrific things about this game! Not limited to but including, repeating areas, very strange art design, terrible loot system, inconsistency with prequel or even with the lore in the game itself, very poor combat system and of course the worst of the lot... the enemies that spawn out of thin air right in front of you thus making all tactics completely irrelevant.
However I recently managed to actually finish this game, after trying for the 5th time. What I found out as I did finish it was that I actually enjoyed certain aspects of it far more than any game in quite a while. In my mind there are some ideas that are implemented extremely well or ideas that were very close to being excellent, which I honestly wish some people would try to recreate in a more palatable game engine.
The three main things that caught my attention were:
1.) The time frame and location. I don't mean the city of Kirkwall itself, but the way the game is set in one location over a period of time (where things happened and the situation changes). It could have been done much better I think, especially in the sense that the changes weren't all that dramatic. But if some used this formula and then over three or four chapters showed how a city/npc's change over time e.g. new districts go up, visually the people around you age and perhaps the political situation shifts around - reacting with your role-playing choices to some degree (even if only cosmetically). This is something I would actually enjoy a whole lot more I think than just another quest over a country side with little stops along the way.
2.) The story itself. By that I am talking about moving away from stories where the world gets saved or destroyed based on alignment *rolls eyes*. I have always enjoyed games far more when the task at hand is only very arbitrarily important, where the choices plus random situations along the way create an interesting world. Games like fallout 1/2/NV, planescape torment, icewind dale, gothic and a bunch of older games whose names I no longer recall...
In Dragon Age 2 I guess you could say that the story is mostly driven by the companions rather than anything else and I think it works relatively well.
3.) The idea of your character being tied into the game world. In this case the fact that you have a family which are more than just "Your mother tells you to go out and explore the world after giving $200, have fun dear!" crap. Obviously this doesn't have to be your family, it can be a clan, or caravan you are with...whatever. But something that just ties you into that world as more than a faceless traveler.
Obviously these things wouldn't work far all RPG's and in fact many people hate hard driven linear stories. There is however a group that do enjoy this type of thing and I think that Dragon Age 2 certainly made some steps in the right direction (I was also surprised at how much quite good content was hidden away in fairly sneaky side quests).