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Review Dragon Age 2 is Darkier, Sexier, Better

misha

Educated
Joined
Sep 20, 2009
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Cracow
About these sidequests in bg2 completely odd to main quest [and irenicus waiting..]- well i think that it was one of the best things in bg2
:?

-that was the reason i wanted to play it again and again; i knew that i will always find sth new.. new and [coming back to DAO] INTERESTING. in dao i end the game.. and that was the end...

Ice Temple was a one way maze with a few other chambers. I didn't want to discover a new guy with his questbag, i knew that 2minutes sightseeing in denerim is all i can see there, and even not all houses are accessible [according to statement that denerim is not only a market district ... well if prison area... or castle is only one time experience and there is nothing to do than only one quest* it is not only a stupid idea but also loosing money from developers].

*i know that in many rpgs certain areas are usually for one quest but hey.. not in rpgs where locations are so limited :/ [by locations i mean areas where you have to seek and discover sth not one way mazes :p]
 

Angthoron

Arcane
Joined
Jul 13, 2007
Messages
13,056
Seven said:
I can see just fine: you used the sub-heading "PREMISE." The premise of both games are epic fantasies in which you save the world. Implementation is something different. Look man, it's the internet and this is a forum, you can't pretend that you meant something else when it's in plain black and white for all the world to see.

Alright, fine, outline the premise of DA and BG1 then, because this is plain black and white.

BG1: A dude trying to figure out what he is and what is going on with a bunch of bros. Finds out he's uber but with tons of other ubers being out there wanting to kill him and each others.
Da1: A dude sets out to save the world as one of the last of his kind.

'k. No difference.

Alright, alright. I'll make a small concession here. Yes, there are similarities in the sense of the following: it's a heroic fantasy, the protagonists are both blood-bound to their position in the plot, and they need to overcome something or the other. If you really want to use the "All stories have a finite amount of variations to run by", alright, we can go with it, too. However, in this particular case, first premise is interesting, while the second premise is interesting if you're a teenager.

Actually, Denerim was more than just the market district. BTW, sure they could have created separate little areas for every quest NPC, but how does that add value--who likes load times. Do you remember BG, where you had to go from area to another and then another just to complete the most mundane fedex quest? People tend to forget about this as time goes on.

A hundred square feet is in no way better though, is it? I'll not go immersion-fagging here, but just for basics - I want to see where the years of work are supposed to be. Couldn't they just carve the old zones up or something? Or did they redo everything from a scratch when the project was rebooted? Seems more that way to me.

When BG came out, it was huge, and yes, it had painfully slow load times and don't forget that you had to often pop those disks in and out, but the pay-off was clearly there. Frankly, I prefer to pop those disks for an off-chance to see something different and creative to having slow load times of tiny repetitive zones. And yes, DA manages to have slow load times while not giving much of anything in return.

Let's compare to a contemporary - Denerim (DA) vs Vizima (TW). Denerim is tiny and slow and unmemorable while trying to present a down-to-earth sort of a fantasy setting. Vizima, on the other hand, is of a proper size, filled with crowd-generating NPCs and having a general atmosphere of a city. Certainly, TW didn't have a limitation of having to run on a console, and I can forgive tiny areas to DA based on this, but otherwise, it just fails to present a believable city. It's like Imperial City, only condensed to one tiny district.

Back to this--once again with time experience fades, so if you're going to limit yourself to just BG1, may be you might recall how generic and black and white the games was (even more so than the sequels and expansions)--it just seems like you're remembering just the good and then painting and overly rosy picture at that. And I mention this since you decided to bring up implementation.

Yes, but I don't mention all of the implementations, just those five points, which are my original concern. Quest design has improved undoubtedly, and the 3D presentation can make for more impressive camera work, melee combat is far more involved... But I wasn't bringing those up so let's just not go there, unless we do it separate from the rest of this thing.

You don't have to do all of the mundane quests in DA--in fact in some intances you can tell NPCs' off if you're unsatisfied with the quality of the quest. Maybe you've forgotten the myriad of mundane tasks in BG, or maybe you like killing rats?

Maybe I do, when the story supports the reasoning behind killing rats. At the start of BG you play a character that's probably only killed rats up to the point where the story begins.

In DA you can have a character that's never killed before at the start of the story turning into a murder machine still in the prologue - the Noble intro where you can rip off the asses off the assailants while the Guard and everyone else just fucking dies to the super-assassins. Your power, however, is not supported by the story at this point because you've not yet fused yourself with McGuffin.

And yes, you can avoid the sidequests, but why should you? Unless you're doing a speedrun (what) or are bored of the side-quests, why would you want to skip them? Why would you not want to upgrade your sidekicks or bone Dog? And what will the story do anyway, present you a game over screen if you take too long?

Simply put, there's absolutely no reason to hurry. None! People bashed this to no end with Oblivion, and this is pretty much the exact same thing, except you have Blight instead of Gates.

Both games look fine when compared to their contemporaries to me atl least...

Dunno, man. Compare DA art/graphics against TW or Risen or Drakensang, for instance. Sure, DA isn't a steaming pile of crap when it comes to graphics, but it's not going to win beauty contests among even the RPG genre (although why "even"? RPGs these days are as much about graphics as any other genre). The graphics are serviceable, but unworthy of praise that have been given out by the media.

Meanwhile, comparing BG1 against its contemporaries is, while in part, a matter of taste, more in favour of BG1 - there certainly were more technologically advanced games at the time, but what BG1 has going for it is an overall impression - and it is a vastly different game from any other at the time from the way it looks and sounds. DA, on the other hand, feels generic, to me at least.
 

SCO

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In My Safe Space
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Sceptic said:
BG story structure revolves around you looking for answers about Gorion's killer, your assassins and the iron crisis. You go around, discover shit, do sidequests.
You just reminded me of another aspect I liked in BG1 and that never reappeared in subsequent Bioware games: no leading by the nose in the MQ, at least early on. "Stuff is brewing up. Here's a small hint on where to start. Now here's the world, go have fun." Compare this with every single one of their other games: each NWN chapter started in the center, go in each cardinal direction to gather one of the plot coupons; ME has the retard-friendly HUGE signs over the plot nabulae/systems/planets so that there is absolutely no way to miss them; KOTOR and DAO are even worse, the only places to visit are the usual 4 plot ones (Denerim's already been covered elsewhere); JE didn't even have a world map (and no, the one they added in the PC version that you never, ever end up using doesn't count). Even BG2 was a step back with every location being neatly comparmentalized and there being no exploration to speak of, but at least it didn't have a giant "go here for the next step in the MQ" sign when on the world map.

I wonder what happens to a biowhore faithful when they try a game like Star Control 2.
 

Serious_Business

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Get the fuck out with your BG1 apologism

You're just encounted 383829 blue screeching dwarves! How bout some more! I love this game, great exploration!
 

Sceptic

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Divinity: Original Sin
No one's saying BG1 is great. We're just saying it's better than DAO. Big difference.
 

J_C

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Serious_Business said:
Get the fuck out with your BG1 apologism

You're just encounted 383829 blue screeching dwarves! How bout some more! I love this game, great exploration!
No, you get the fuck out with your BG1 hate. :smug:
 

ElectricOtter

Guest
SCO said:
Sceptic said:
BG story structure revolves around you looking for answers about Gorion's killer, your assassins and the iron crisis. You go around, discover shit, do sidequests.
You just reminded me of another aspect I liked in BG1 and that never reappeared in subsequent Bioware games: no leading by the nose in the MQ, at least early on. "Stuff is brewing up. Here's a small hint on where to start. Now here's the world, go have fun." Compare this with every single one of their other games: each NWN chapter started in the center, go in each cardinal direction to gather one of the plot coupons; ME has the retard-friendly HUGE signs over the plot nabulae/systems/planets so that there is absolutely no way to miss them; KOTOR and DAO are even worse, the only places to visit are the usual 4 plot ones (Denerim's already been covered elsewhere); JE didn't even have a world map (and no, the one they added in the PC version that you never, ever end up using doesn't count). Even BG2 was a step back with every location being neatly comparmentalized and there being no exploration to speak of, but at least it didn't have a giant "go here for the next step in the MQ" sign when on the world map.

I wonder what happens to a biowhore faithful when they try a game like Star Control 2.
What? I have to buy fuel? WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BULLSHIT FFS

Hell, they'd probably recoil in terror at the likes of Exile or Geneforge.
 

misha

Educated
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Cracow
to escape for certain star-system where you discovered how planet-scanning is entertaining and more thrilling than killing Geths :D
 

Angthoron

Arcane
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Messages
13,056
Sceptic said:
You just reminded me of another aspect I liked in BG1 and that never reappeared in subsequent Bioware games: no leading by the nose in the MQ, at least early on. "Stuff is brewing up. Here's a small hint on where to start. Now here's the world, go have fun." Compare this with every single one of their other games: each NWN chapter started in the center, go in each cardinal direction to gather one of the plot coupons; ME has the retard-friendly HUGE signs over the plot nabulae/systems/planets so that there is absolutely no way to miss them; KOTOR and DAO are even worse, the only places to visit are the usual 4 plot ones (Denerim's already been covered elsewhere); JE didn't even have a world map (and no, the one they added in the PC version that you never, ever end up using doesn't count). Even BG2 was a step back with every location being neatly comparmentalized and there being no exploration to speak of, but at least it didn't have a giant "go here for the next step in the MQ" sign when on the world map.

Yes, this is also a feature I've been missing in story-driven RPGs in general - most of them have a very clearly pronounced main quest these days that you feel obliged to follow. There isn't really a lead-up to it, it's just there for granted. In a sense, it is good as it provides an often much-needed backbone to the story, however, most of the time, the designers seem to ignore the backbone and just go all over the place with things for the player to do that results in a rather frightening abomination more times than not.

Games that don't do this give a greater illusion of freedom and a better flow to the story, and they at least pretend to treat the player as an intelligent being - yes, these key points are normally positioned throughout the game so that you will find them sooner or later anyway, and it will be bound to your natural progression, but at least the game pretends that you did some guesswork and investigating.
 

Volourn

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"We're just saying it's better than DAO."

You arew rong 'cause it isn't better. So stop the fuckin' lying, fuckface.
 

ElectricOtter

Guest
Volourn said:
"We're just saying it's better than DAO."

You arew rong 'cause it isn't better. So stop the fuckin' lying, fuckface.
:lol:
 

Angthoron

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Volourn said:
"We're just saying it's better than DAO."

You arew rong 'cause it isn't better. So stop the fuckin' lying, fuckface.

Still waiting for those examples of memorable locations in Dragon Age, Volourn.

Also, perhaps you'd like to expand a little on your reasoning?
 
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Volourn said:
"We're just saying it's better than DAO."

You arew rong 'cause it isn't better. So stop the fuckin' lying, fuckface.

Yes, everyone who believes lies about BG1 being better than DAO is quite obviously a member of the Rong tribe of China from the medieval period. As always, Volly, your insight is unmatched by the weaker specimens of the Codex
 

DragoFireheart

all caps, rainbow colors, SOMETHING.
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Messages
23,731
chzr said:
Angthoron said:
Still waiting for those examples of memorable locations in Dragon Age, Volourn.

derp roads :smug:


Die in a fire you fucking piece of shit! Derp roads, along with ghost zone, make me not want to play DA again.
 

Radisshu

Prophet
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Jul 16, 2007
Messages
5,623
DragoFireheart said:
chzr said:
Angthoron said:
Still waiting for those examples of memorable locations in Dragon Age, Volourn.

derp roads :smug:


Die in a fire you fucking piece of shit! Derp roads, along with ghost zone, make me not want to play DA again.

It's funny how all of DA's memorable elements are memorable for all the wrong reasons.
 

misha

Educated
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64
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Cracow
about memorable locations: well starting as a mage and going to the Fade [the black city view..] was for the first time pretty cool - but I thought that the Fade will be sth more [hm the black city not only as a view?]- it wasn't such shit like oblivion's gates but still.. it could be better used =in MotB you weren't only taught about other planes-you could "touch" the mythology you were told - and in DA:O? well boring stuff about one bit.. lady is too small to give a thrill

but in awakening-this "gift" from the mother was probably the best fade moment in whole DA:O and A. for me :)


ah one more thing - about the atmosphere-which is probably my greates accuse for DA [and this is totally personal feeling]; in Morrowind inqusition of the temple was STH - not only because they got awesome "mystic" armours but you had also a feeling of a strong organisation, on the opposite are templars and chantry from DAO; they are usually arrogant pain in the ass for mages and they even aren't fanatic :smug: [on the other hand maybe due to the fact that the main role there play women-and i am an awful male chauvinist :D ]
 

Seven

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Angthoron said:
Seven said:
I can see just fine: you used the sub-heading "PREMISE." The premise of both games are epic fantasies in which you save the world. Implementation is something different. Look man, it's the internet and this is a forum, you can't pretend that you meant something else when it's in plain black and white for all the world to see.

Alright, fine, outline the premise of DA and BG1 then, because this is plain black and white.

BG1: A dude trying to figure out what he is and what is going on with a bunch of bros. Finds out he's uber but with tons of other ubers being out there wanting to kill him and each others.
Da1: A dude sets out to save the world as one of the last of his kind.

'k. No difference.

Alright, alright. I'll make a small concession here. Yes, there are similarities in the sense of the following: it's a heroic fantasy, the protagonists are both blood-bound to their position in the plot, and they need to overcome something or the other. If you really want to use the "All stories have a finite amount of variations to run by", alright, we can go with it, too. However, in this particular case, first premise is interesting, while the second premise is interesting if you're a teenager.

Actually, Denerim was more than just the market district. BTW, sure they could have created separate little areas for every quest NPC, but how does that add value--who likes load times. Do you remember BG, where you had to go from area to another and then another just to complete the most mundane fedex quest? People tend to forget about this as time goes on.

A hundred square feet is in no way better though, is it? I'll not go immersion-fagging here, but just for basics - I want to see where the years of work are supposed to be. Couldn't they just carve the old zones up or something? Or did they redo everything from a scratch when the project was rebooted? Seems more that way to me.

When BG came out, it was huge, and yes, it had painfully slow load times and don't forget that you had to often pop those disks in and out, but the pay-off was clearly there. Frankly, I prefer to pop those disks for an off-chance to see something different and creative to having slow load times of tiny repetitive zones. And yes, DA manages to have slow load times while not giving much of anything in return.

Let's compare to a contemporary - Denerim (DA) vs Vizima (TW). Denerim is tiny and slow and unmemorable while trying to present a down-to-earth sort of a fantasy setting. Vizima, on the other hand, is of a proper size, filled with crowd-generating NPCs and having a general atmosphere of a city. Certainly, TW didn't have a limitation of having to run on a console, and I can forgive tiny areas to DA based on this, but otherwise, it just fails to present a believable city. It's like Imperial City, only condensed to one tiny district.

Back to this--once again with time experience fades, so if you're going to limit yourself to just BG1, may be you might recall how generic and black and white the games was (even more so than the sequels and expansions)--it just seems like you're remembering just the good and then painting and overly rosy picture at that. And I mention this since you decided to bring up implementation.

Yes, but I don't mention all of the implementations, just those five points, which are my original concern. Quest design has improved undoubtedly, and the 3D presentation can make for more impressive camera work, melee combat is far more involved... But I wasn't bringing those up so let's just not go there, unless we do it separate from the rest of this thing.

You don't have to do all of the mundane quests in DA--in fact in some intances you can tell NPCs' off if you're unsatisfied with the quality of the quest. Maybe you've forgotten the myriad of mundane tasks in BG, or maybe you like killing rats?

Maybe I do, when the story supports the reasoning behind killing rats. At the start of BG you play a character that's probably only killed rats up to the point where the story begins.

In DA you can have a character that's never killed before at the start of the story turning into a murder machine still in the prologue - the Noble intro where you can rip off the asses off the assailants while the Guard and everyone else just fucking dies to the super-assassins. Your power, however, is not supported by the story at this point because you've not yet fused yourself with McGuffin.

And yes, you can avoid the sidequests, but why should you? Unless you're doing a speedrun (what) or are bored of the side-quests, why would you want to skip them? Why would you not want to upgrade your sidekicks or bone Dog? And what will the story do anyway, present you a game over screen if you take too long?

Simply put, there's absolutely no reason to hurry. None! People bashed this to no end with Oblivion, and this is pretty much the exact same thing, except you have Blight instead of Gates.

Both games look fine when compared to their contemporaries to me atl least...

Dunno, man. Compare DA art/graphics against TW or Risen or Drakensang, for instance. Sure, DA isn't a steaming pile of crap when it comes to graphics, but it's not going to win beauty contests among even the RPG genre (although why "even"? RPGs these days are as much about graphics as any other genre). The graphics are serviceable, but unworthy of praise that have been given out by the media.

Meanwhile, comparing BG1 against its contemporaries is, while in part, a matter of taste, more in favour of BG1 - there certainly were more technologically advanced games at the time, but what BG1 has going for it is an overall impression - and it is a vastly different game from any other at the time from the way it looks and sounds. DA, on the other hand, feels generic, to me at least.

You’re persistent—I’ll give you that. You know despite not knowing you’re going to save the world, you do end up saving the Sword Coast (at the minimum). Anyway, lets’ not get too hung up on that: if I haven’t convinced by now I’m not going to.

I really don’t prefer not areas just for the sake of new areas—just me. I don’t think that Denerim is unmemorable though. I will concede that for the capital I was hoping for a larger selection of merchants, although this wasn’t an issue as it works—why bother going to five different magic shops to get components when you can satisfy all needs at one spot?

In DA your character is already accomplished in his/her particular field so being able to kill darkspawn isn’t that unbelievable—also you’ll note that even late in the game darkspawn aren’t very hard to kill.

Also if we compare BG to titles to IWD or Fallout it’s not that impressive. DA compared to what’s available now is a pretty enjoyable experience despite its glaring flaws.
 

Angthoron

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13,056
Seven said:
I really don’t prefer not areas just for the sake of new areas—just me. I don’t think that Denerim is unmemorable though. I will concede that for the capital I was hoping for a larger selection of merchants, although this wasn’t an issue as it works—why bother going to five different magic shops to get components when you can satisfy all needs at one spot?

Well, I don't really want new areas just for the sake of new areas either, in fact, I'll agree with you about this - there's really no point of having a ton of different merchants when you can have one. Still, I was starting the game under the impression that it was meant to be immersive etc etc, and honestly, why not just spam some NPCs without any lines to pretend the game doesn't revolve around the player's little heroic quest? It could've made it better, at least from my point of view.

A bit of variety, a bit of space to accomodate all the main/sidequest NPC locations, that's all - I don't really mean that I'd want to see a gigantic city with a merchant each single piece of equipment, just something a little more natural.

In DA your character is already accomplished in his/her particular field so being able to kill darkspawn isn’t that unbelievable—also you’ll note that even late in the game darkspawn aren’t very hard to kill.

Well, this one I could debate - some of the origins give your character a more appropriate background, I understand, but if we take, say, human noble, there's no indication whatsoever that the character is accomplished in anything, merely that he/she is able to single-handedly slaughter an entire force of attackers for magical reasons of plot convenience. Later on, it becomes less of a problem til the point it's not a problem at all, what with the plot device of blood and constant fighting and all, but at first, it feels kind of out of the blue.

Also if we compare BG to titles to IWD or Fallout it’s not that impressive. DA compared to what’s available now is a pretty enjoyable experience despite its glaring flaws.

Mm, yes. BG is certainly weaker than Fallout in a whole lot of aspects except maybe the graphics and ambients and such, and IWD is definitely a better game overall as well (though it came out later). It's by no means a shining example of gaming history, yet in a sense it was a turning point. I don't mean to idolize it or anything, just playing compare points against an early BioWare product and a current BioWare product mainly.

As for Dragon Age, I don't know. I suppose I missed out on a lot of truly shitty recent RPGs, but even though DA isn't terribad, it's still horribly mediocre for such a hyped-up title. It's a wasted opportunity for a company with that amount of resources at its disposal.
 

J_C

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Angthoron said:
Well, I don't really want new areas just for the sake of new areas either, in fact, I'll agree with you about this - there's really no point of having a ton of different merchants when you can have one.
I'm on the opinion that there is no problem in having some filler areas and more merchants offering similar goods. This helps to create the illusion of a real, living world. Denerim feels like a quest hub, and not a real city.
 

Angthoron

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J_C said:
I'm on the opinion that there is no problem in having some filler areas and more merchants offering similar goods. This helps to create the illusion of a real, living world. Denerim feels like a quest hub, and not a real city.

Yarp. It's a bit of a mystery to me why BioWare is aiming for such compact zone designs, though I am guessing it might have something to do with the engine being a memory hog on consoles, and larger levels and numbers of NPCs probably cause some heavy stuttering. So while I can accept the merchants being compounded due to technical limitations, I also am of a similar opinion about it detracting from the overall feel of the world.

Oh, and I might be wrong on this one, but the ambients in Denerim don't really make it sound like a busy town, with muted noises coming from "the distance", or do they? One of the things that I vividly remembered from the BG games and from NWN is the excellent use of ambient sounds in towns and taverns. It was a really simple trick, but it sort of breathed some extra bit of life into all those places.
 

J_C

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Angthoron said:
Oh, and I might be wrong on this one, but the ambients in Denerim don't really make it sound like a busy town, with muted noises coming from "the distance", or do they? One of the things that I vividly remembered from the BG games and from NWN is the excellent use of ambient sounds in towns and taverns. It was a really simple trick, but it sort of breathed some extra bit of life into all those places.
You are right, I noticed the same thing. When I entered the inn for the first time, there was only silence. In older Bioware games (even in NWN) you could hear people talking, and musicians playing in the background. DA lacks this atmosphere. This is also true fo the outdoor areas. I don't remember you could hear the sounds of birds or a river, or the wind, when you wondered in the forests.
 

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