Dragon Age Dragon Age 2 was released ten years ago

[Camel]

Dragon Age 2 is the game where BioWare started it's slow but ever accelerating downward spiral. EA forced BioWare to develop DA2 in 1,5 year while Dragon Age: Origins was developed in 5 years.
It had the worst recycled areas in any game I ever played - same dungeon, same cave, same warehouse for an entire play-through.
Dumbing down and streamlining of:
1. RPG-elements
2. Combat.
3. Replacing normal dialogues with a goddamn dialogue wheel.
4. Inventory(You can't change companions amour).

Combat was godawful. Waves and waves of teleporting trash mobs where your careful tactical positioning of your party doesn't matter because enemies will flank you or hit you in the rear. Combat on insanity was a chore with bullet sponge bosses surrounded by hordes of weak mobs.

Not to mention the DA2 bad writing and playersexual romances. It had a refreshing plot unlike formulaic plot of almost every other BioWare game but execution was dreadful. The Mage vs Templar conflict declared as a conflict between freedom and security or aka as the gun control debate. It also started to become politically correct but still had Isabela's and Bethany's titties.

Spoiler

DA2 marketing was a mess with comedy gold memes like "Press a button and something awesome happens" and "think like a General, fight like a SPARTAN!”.

PC Gamer and the Escapist gave it 94% and "5 out of 5 Stars" accordingly while the Codex wrote an honest and witty review.
P.S. Reminder that some biodrones still have DA2 tattoos.

Spoiler

P.P.S. DA2 was met with a well-earned vitriol and backlash on the BSN(BioWare official forums) and the devs even created a separate subforum for the game owners who bought it to censor some criticism.

 

[Fedora Master]

Bullshit. The decline was visible as far back as the Black Isle days.

Also do not ever talk about DA2 again. The game deserves damnatio memoriae. You're only going to attract retards who think they're edgy contrarians.

 

[dragonul09]

This was my 9/11 in terms of gaming disasters, what a terrible day to release a terrible game.

 

[Larianshill]

I guess they did the best they could with the development time they had - which was about a year - but the end result was still sad. If we're to spend the entire game in one single city, the city should at least be interesting and meaningfully change through the 10 fucking years of the game's timeline. But it never does.

 

[Camel]

I guess they did the best they could with the development time they had - which was about a year - but the end result was still sad. If we're to spend the entire game in one single city, the city should at least be interesting and meaningfully change through the 10 fucking years of the game's timeline. But it never does.

I'm still puzzled if they had an opportunity to say no to their corporate overlords but alas... BioWare also created Athkatla 9 years before DA2 where you were severely punished for using magic by the Cowled Wizards but in Kirkwall you could use blood magic in front of the Templars not only without any consequences but without the game even acknowledging it. It's like wearing SS uniform and giving a Nazi salute in front of Antifa in Seattle or Portland.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Do it wrong and it will make you sick.

 

[just]

never played it
am i missing something?

 

[Melcar]

Their decline started with TOB.

 

[Butter]

Bioware's downward spiral can be seen at least as early as NWN, with its 2-man parties and shitty over-the-shoulder camera. Some argue that BG2's player-centric theme park design is the nexus of their decline. DA2 can only be seen as a shocking decline if you, for some reason, had any expectations of quality going into it.

 

[Camel]

Their decline started with TOB.

Hold your horses.

Bioware's downward spiral can be seen at least as early as NWN, with its 2-man parties and shitty over-the-shoulder camera. Some argue that BG2's player-centric theme park design is the nexus of their decline. DA2 can only be seen as a shocking decline if you, for some reason, had any expectations of quality going into it.

NWN campaign was terrible, no doubt. But BioWare still had KOTOR, ME and DA:O after that.

 

[Falksi]

There may have been hints of decline on the road to DA2, but DA2 was the bombshell moment where it all went to shit.

Also...

 

[Quillon]

Bullshit. The decline was visible as far back as the Black Isle days.

It was apparent ever since the invention of transistor tbh

 

[Camel]

There may have been hints of decline on the road to DA2, but DA2 was the bombshell moment where it all went to shit.

Also...

Spoiler

No doubt and NWN with Jade empire were rightfully criticised.

 

[Fedora Master]

I am absolutely devastated the GIGGLESQUEE LP that happened on ye olde Something Awful didn't survive. At least the images didn't. It showed the true horror of DA2 in every single aspect.

http://gigglesquee.blogspot.com/2011/11/and-here-my-troubles-began.html

 

[Camel]

I am absolutely devastated the GIGGLESQUEE LP that happened on ye olde Something Awful didn't survive. At least the images didn't. It showed the true horror of DA2 in every single aspect.

http://gigglesquee.blogspot.com/2011/11/and-here-my-troubles-began.html

I remember that thread on the SA and how the "goons" downvoted it to their variant of Purgatory.

 

[karoliner]

A date which will live in infamy.

 

[Gargaune]

I guess they did the best they could with the development time they had - which was about a year - but the end result was still sad.

Icewind Dale 2 was developed in ten months, and that included Black Isle swapping from 2E to 3E. EA's microscopic development schedule isn't the only thing to blame for Dragon Age 2, it's not like BioWare had no idea what sort of timeframes they were working with. Dragon Age 2 was such an irredeemable clusterfuck that EA later gave Mass Effect 2 for free as compensation to its victims, and I still want my money back.

Also do not ever talk about DA2 again. The game deserves damnatio memoriae.

Agreed. Ten years is not enough.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Last bioware game I ever bought.

 

[Camel]

Last bioware game I ever bought.

Wish I could've said that. Heaven helped me not to to buy DA2 but just as an abused wife I bought more BioWare games after 2011 thinking surely they would change.

 

[Skinwalker]

It had a refreshing plot unlike formulaic plot of almost every other BioWare game but execution was dreadful. The Mage vs Templar conflict declared as a conflict between freedom and security or aka as the gun control debate.

What's refreshing about it? It's three different, almost entirely unrelated stories with no common theme or central element.

Although, the plot of the first chapter is so thread-bare, it could conceivably qualify as an extended introduction/set-up for the main plot. "Breadwinner of a family of rapefugees is trying to survive in a weird multicultural city" - sure, decent enough excuse for a bunch of side-quests leading up to a dungeon crawl.

But then, either the Qunary arc or the Templar arc would need to be removed (I'd nix the horny commufascists, their story in DAII is irredeemably retarded), and whichever one remaining would need to be fleshed-out properly and given some satisfying C&Cs in order to work as the second half and conclusion of the game.

Also no time-skips. And more than three maps for side-quest exploration. And combat that isn't shit. And above-reddit-tier writing. And no SJW crap. And either commit to a pre-generated fixed protagonist, or allow for a fully-customizable one, this weird Commander Shepherd-style hybrid was the worst of both worlds.

And for the love of crap, wtf was that "lesbian inquisitor interrogating unfunny dwarf guy" framing device? They didn't have time/resources to erase blocked-off passages from the minimap to make the asset reuse less embarassing, but still put in all the work for numerous annoying cutscenes that amounted to little more than "let me tell you how the game that you're playing happened, also here's a sequel hook that never pays off"?

Shows where their priorities were at.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Dragon Age 2 is the game where BioWare started it's slow but ever accelerating downward spiral.

Reminder: Bioware was decline from the start.

 

[Orud]

Of all games that can be considered in a 'finished' state, DA2 must be my least favorite game ever.

The story was dogshit:

• It features, even to this day, some of the dumbest characters in video games ever. For example, Anders's reason for blowing up the church is just so fucking dumb.
• It tried to sell us a story of the conflict between templars and mages, with mages being portrayed as poor misunderstood people that were wrongfully accused of all being bloodmages. They then went on and made 99% of the mages you encounter in the game an actual bloodmage.

The gameplay was dogshit:

• Every encounter was a wave based encounter, where positioning was useless. You see 2 bandits mugging a poor old elf? The second you start attacking those 2 bandits, 6 extra bandits will materialize in a circle around you and attack.
• Every encounter had several (usually identical) waves, where enemies would always spawn around your party. Outside of corner camping you couldn't cover the rear of your party.
• Boss-fights weren't hard, just huge HP sponges.
• Increasing the difficulty just upped the HP of most things.

The level design was a joke:

• There were less than a handful of dungeons/caves in the game, yet you were constantly sent towards them.
• A different dungeon just meant that you started on a different point in the map, with the previous exits sometimes blocked off by a smooth concrete wall (really not noticeable in a natural cave).

It was a miserable, mind numbing experience. It's the first time that I turned a game's difficulty to easy near the end, just so I could finish it faster. It's a turd, polished it may be, and I don't understand how people on the codex of all places might like it.

 

[Fedora Master]

Once more Codexians discover that shit does indeed taste like shit.

 

[Skinwalker]

It was a miserable, mind numbing experience. It's the first time that I turned a games difficulty to easy near the end, just so I could finish it faster. It's a turd, polished it may be, and I don't understand how people on the codex of all places might like it.

It's a horribly unpolished turd.

 

[Fedora Master]

It was a miserable, mind numbing experience. It's the first time that I turned a games difficulty to easy near the end, just so I could finish it faster. It's a turd, polished it may be, and I don't understand how people on the codex of all places might like it.

It's a horribly unpolished turd.

Much like you.