What do you hate most about Dragon Age.

[hiver]

On the other hand combat mechanics, especially fighter and rogue skills and abilities were pretty awesome and real enhancement. Archery wasnt so hot though.

Some interior locations were designed excellently and were fucking gorgeous to look from the top down view.
And dragons were a definite plus although it would have been nice if there was a bit more variety in how to combat them successfully.

 

[Radisshu]

Bad dialouge, the Fade, tedious combat, bad encounter design, boring setting, lazy quest design (in SOME cases - there are tons of "go to X amount of Y" quests, and many quests are given through a menu), mostly lame party members (I guess I sort of liked Sten), Origin stories do not impact upon the main quest, TEDIOUS COMBAT, crappy dungeons, simplified character building. The PS3 version was particularly awful, since you couldn't even go into "tactical mode".

The game engine was really good, though.

 

[Jaesun]

2 things come to mind that were facepalmingly bad and just a huge wasted opportunity for Bioware to expand on the lore and history of the game. See I LIKED the whole Andrase history and lore, I found that was done well. That said these 2 made me just face palm:

1. The quest to get Andraste's ashes. The sheer fact they ARE 100% proof positive a "magical substance" that can indeed heal people made me just roll my eyes. Had you returned with these ashes and they did NOT work, I would have given Bioware a +1. This would have provided a LARGE opportunity on the lore and history of Andrase. Why did they not work? Is Andraste not holy? Perhaps those without pure faith in Her do not allow her magic to work on them etc etc... fuck the possibilities of the quest ending this way have endless ramifications on the world.

2. Confronting that guy who leads you to Andraste's ashes. After you return to him after finding the ashes, you are given an option to agree with him that this location should be made public to the world, or that it should remain a secret. Having had my Father cremated not to long ago I KNOW how much ashes a person makes when cremated. And knowing all humans are evil greedy exploiting fuckheads I instantly came to the conclusion that this location SHOULD remain a secret as the exploitation of her limited amount of ashes would become the thing of legends. Apparently telling him it should remain secret (and IIRC you then are FORCED into killing him) this was apparently the "Evil" choice as all of your Good companions freak out when you choose this decision. I was like WTF? When is my Humans will fucking exploit this place to no ends! option. Bleh.

anyways that's my wall of text on DA.

 

[Abelon Blanchetourbe]

What do you hate the most about Dragon Age?

That it ended

But really :

The Fade. Mage Tower.

 

[mondblut]

What I hate is that it didn't flop. Expect more WOW-offlines with party romancing in coming years

 

[Ruprekt]

The whole thing seemed more camp (like a 1980s fantasy movie) than 'mature' or grimdark to me.

This was a plus tho IMO.

 

[Lothers]

Generic setting and story, linearity, boring combat, almost no meaningfull concequences of player's actions, boring combat, fugly forrest.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Too much combat. Too many instances of combat in areas where there should be combat.

Even if the combat was better I think that would still get on my ample man-bosom.

 

[Radisshu]

Did I mention the writing? Well, it felt really juvenile. Even though they we're aiming for grimdark, I guess, sort of, possibly.

 

[The Wizard]

i can tell you what i don't hate, because that list is a lot shorter: the succubus model and

Maybe it wasn't original, but I think dwarven culture was done really well.

the dwarven noble origin was p. good.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

I hate games that feel like conveyor belt work, or any sort of work for that matter. This sort of grinding where you have no choice about it and where you have to pay attention in every encounter gets wearying fast. It's sort of like this, there's a certain amount of maneuvering and doing stuff I'm prepared to do in a certain amount of play time, so while I'll gladly micromanage one encounter the most effective way doing a bunch of stuff that takes time, a hundred encounters doing that is too much and I'm only prepared to perhaps click fireball or attack or whatever, easy or boring as that may be. I will certainly not play a game where you have to do a set of ten things over and over again, in fights with no substance at all. I like variety. Fireball those fuckers, sword the others, against these mummies let's try some Undeath to Death or at least Turn Undead, maybe do some puzzles and quests after that.

It also pisses me off how it's hailed as some challenging old school game, not at all for pussies and obviously if you don't like it must be because you suck at it. This game wouldn't be challenging for a machine. Would probably be easier for it as it wouldn't have patience to be challenged.

 

[Ruprekt]

I played the human noble origin. I'm guessing that was the shitty one?

 

[Radisshu]

I actually sort of liked the dwarven commoner origin. At least it made becoming a Grey Warden feel like a big thing.

 

[DemonKing]

I played the human noble origin. I'm guessing that was the shitty one?

It wasn't great but at least that way you get to marry the princess and become king yourself at the end...

If I had to pick one thing I hated the most it would probably be the huge amount of filler combat - which was doubly a shame because the combat could actually be half-decent but the designers were just too lazy and sloppy to make more than a handful of the combats into more than busy work.

 

[Radisshu]

They really should have included a commoner or soldier origin for humans.

 

[Ruprekt]

Why does everyone have english accents btw?

Other than that we're awesome. Maybe I should pimp my voice out for dragon age porn mods.

 

[Malachi]

Why does everyone have english accents btw?

Other than that we're awesome. Maybe I should pimp my voice out for dragon age porn mods.

"Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the... dragon age porn mods?"

No, my friend, 'tis beneath you.

EDIT: Decided to actually contribute to the topic. I did not like the inadequate quest design. One example from playing recently was a mage quest to stop a party of adventurers from reporting that so-and-so was a blood mage to the Chantry. You catch up to them, and you have two choices: talk them out of it or kill them. Either way, you finish the quest. But talking is a bad move, because you lose the experience from the battle, as well as any loot, and get nothing to compensate.

Sure, an upright and moral hero and party would not care about that -- talking is the "right thing to do." So maybe your good hero should lose the exp and loot, gaining instead the respect and admiration of your party members and the public at large. Except your party members, even the good ones, don't seem to care if you slaughter the opposing adventurers unnecessarily. And there's no reputation / karma / lightside-darkside adjustment, so it seems like the public at large doesn't care either.

...now that I think about it, talking would have spared me the combat itself, in a game that has way too much of it. Maybe that's the payoff? Tricky devs...

 

[CrimHead]

Glorified dating sim

 

[Serious_Business]

The fucking setting.

I remember D. Gaider saying something to the effect of "people don't really want new, original things, in fact if it was too original you would be put off". Everything this mans spout is mediocrity, from his writing to his game design and artistic ideals. It's the mouth of Bioware incarnate.

But yeah - Dragon Age. The game is called fucking Dragon Age. Think about that for a moment. I don't really think my hate needs to be more articulated than that, if you have an ounce of good taste to understand my feeling here. Dragon. Age. This is the game you want to play? Dragon Age. I play Dragon Age. I'm a huge faggot. Is there midgets and orcs in this game? OF COURSE. What about magic? OF COURSE!! Swords and fightan? YES OF COURSE.

GODFUCKING DAAAAAAAAAAMNNNNNNNIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

 

[SCO]

I don't hate it.

Spoiler

Didn't play it either.

 

[StrangeCase]

I tend to agree with the "terrible encounters" people, I think that's easily the worst part. I can get past an unoriginal setting, games have been doing that since forever. The schlocky writing is irritating but bearable with quick reading skills and the "skip dialogue" key. Lame quests are an RPG meme. The godawful romances are skippable. But the combat encounters are not only terribly designed and terribly dull, they're everywhere. That's the deal-breaker.

 

[Arcanoix]

It's 2003 original. Remember, in 2003 DA:O would've been amazing. But it was delayed for YEARS. Rather or not the delays had something to do with bad management or the economy, who knows. My understanding is that D. Gaider isn't one of the senior writers on the team, but he WAS put in charge of it for reasons we don't know. If DA:O had been released in 2005/2006 in it's TRUE cRPG incarnation, who knows what would've happened.

Alas, Bethesda's Oblivion, the fall of Troika and Black Isle, and the tides of the Console Gamers completely changed the precipice of game development. And might I add that Blizzard is just as guilty when it comes to casualizing/consolizing games.

There are remnants, in my opinion, of BioWare's writing potential. The quest involving Connor, Eamon, etc. But EA's interference and D. Gaider's apparent influence kick in - mostly around the Mage Tower, the filler combat during the final onslaught, the dwarf campaign - I don't know what happened, I'm not going to sit down and say, "It's good for what it is!" but - it sure as fuck wasn't as bad as the shit we've been force-fed for years.

If you wipe your memories of games like the Witcher, Oblivion, and Mass Effect, it makes Dragon Age seem not so bad - probably because - SURPRISE - a bulk of the story that WAS kept and built on was written back in 2004/2005.

Someone here should look up old screen shots of Ostagar. What's that? Dynamic areas that have passing time!? O LAWD, that could've meant a limited time to do something!!? O SHI-- then again this is the Codex, nothing is ever good enough.

 

[Turjan]

The fucking setting.

I remember D. Gaider saying something to the effect of "people don't really want new, original things, in fact if it was too original you would be put off". Everything this mans spout is mediocrity, from his writing to his game design and artistic ideals. It's the mouth of Bioware incarnate.

But yeah - Dragon Age. The game is called fucking Dragon Age. Think about that for a moment.

I never played the game, so I cannot make any informed statement about the game's biggest shortcoming, but it's definitely the setting that put me off from ever trying the game. Neither becoming a warden nor fighting darkspawn ever looked enticing to me.

As I don't really know the game and the post made me curious: What role do dragons play in Dragon Age?

 

[Malachi]

The big-bad at the end of the game is called an "Archdemon," and is in the form of a dragon.

 

[Achilles]

I agree that the main problem was the huge amounts of filler, uninteresting combat encounters.