Interview Dragon Age II Interview

[Jaesun]

Dragon Age 2: Press the A button.

 

[racofer]

 

[MicoSelva]

you press a button and something cool happens!

A worthy sequel to the previous Prince of Persia games.
Wait, wasn't she talking about Dragon Age?

There’s like a cause and effect, its happening before your eyes, you’re not having to pause and set up a scene if you don’t want to, and you’re not getting annihilated if you don’t play that way.

Instant gratification system. Really helps with the short attention span of players nowadays.
If combat is action-based, this just will cease to be an RPG. Of course, You can play tactically, but why would You, if button mashing will give the same effect three times faster? It's like in Football Manager, instead of many hours of thinking and tinkering, You could take control of the players and defeat every oponent, regardless of Your team's strength.
Mass Effect 2 did the same thing. Leveling up was useful but not necessary. Everything could be killed with Your own Gears of War skills.

I like this type of combat, I feel like its faster and the pace is faster

So... the combat is faster and faster, or does my comprehension of English fail me?

 

[Volourn]

"This + "I think it will be about the length of Mass Effect 2. " Imo ME 2 was too short for this genre."

Bullshitz. ME2 was 40-50 hours. Meanwhile, Codex's beloved FO was 10-20 hours at amx and was actually shorter than that.

As for DA outselling ME2. That's also bullshit. They have both sold 3mil+. FFS

 

[Sceptic]

ME2 was 40-50 hours.

35h with all sidequests and all DLCs, no skipping dialogs, lots of time spent away from keyboard. Stop the lies start the truths.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Codex's beloved FO was 10-20 hours at amx and was actually shorter than that.

But somehow I've played F1&2 after finishing the games several times but I had no wish to touch ME2 after completing it and I still don't.

I knew that I missed a lot of stuff in F1&2 after first playtrough and I wanted to do that stuff, not the same thing with ME2.

 

[racofer]

ME2 was 40-50 hours.

35h with all sidequests and all DLCs, no skipping dialogs, lots of time spent away from keyboard. Stop the lies start the truths.

Bullshit.

 

[Jasede]

ME2 was 40-50 hours.

35h with all sidequests and all DLCs, no skipping dialogs, lots of time spent away from keyboard. Stop the lies start the truths.

Don't even try; Volly won't believe me that Jade Empire was only 23 hours or so (looking around every place multiple times to find every quest) either.

I did skip all the VO, though; I ain't that retarded yet.

 

[Sceptic]

I did skip all the VO, though; I ain't that retarded yet.

In JE? yeah so did I. Clocked in at just 20h IIRC. I think I got all the sidequests, but I didn't check very thoroughly. Past chapter 3 the game just zips by anyway.

ME1 actually took me about the same as ME2 (both 35h), but a lot of that time in ME1 was with the sloooooooooooooow walking mode and fooling around with the Mako. Though I did also skip most of the dialog, thanks to atrocious VA. At least ME2's was good enough that you didn't feel like skipping it all.

 

[Loriac]

Choice: buy DA2

Consequence: demonstrate you're a


Bioware RPG developer RIP


As for this woman, she hit every branch on the stupid tree on the way down.

 

[Silellak]

I lol'd:

Now, as I mentioned to you, I dropped out of the first one because the combat was difficult, I got stuck last time, have you maintained that level of difficulty for the second one?

 

[Volourn]

"But somehow I've played F1&2 after finishing the games several times but I had no wish to touch ME2 after completing it and I still don't."

Good for you. but, we were talking about one play through, dumbass. the fact you liked FO more than ME2 proves nothing in this disucssion.


"I knew that I missed a lot of stuff in F1&2 after first playtrough and I wanted to do that stuff, not the same thing with ME2."

This is where you lie. It's a fact that you CANNOT see everything in one playthrough of ME2. So, stop the bullshitz start the truthz.


"Volly won't believe me that Jade Empire was only 23 hours"

It's 'only' 23 hours if you only speed run. Why bother playing a agme if you are skipping everything just to brag how fast you are. Afterall, BG2 is suppsoedly beatable in an hour or so and FO1 is beatable in less than 30 minutes but WTF would you want to do this shit?

Shouldn't you be playing games to enjoy them not just to complete them? And, if you aren't enjoying them STOP FUCKING PLAYING THEM.

 

[Excidium]

Bioware sure is taking RPGs to a whole new level.

If DA2 is going to be like that, I can't wait to see ME3.

I guess the next step is awesome things happening without the need to press a button.

 

[Drakron]

If DA2 is going to be like that, I can't wait to see ME3.

And here is the amusing thing, DA:O sold more that ME2 and they already said that ME3 will have more RPG elements that ME2.

 

[Volourn]

nO.

 

[commie]

"This + "I think it will be about the length of Mass Effect 2. " Imo ME 2 was too short for this genre."

Bullshitz. ME2 was 40-50 hours. Meanwhile, Codex's beloved FO was 10-20 hours at amx and was actually shorter than that.

As for DA outselling ME2. That's also bullshit. They have both sold 3mil+. FFS

This. Of course, ME2 was 20 hours (at least) too long, but even with scanning every planet and doing every DLC, it took me almost exactly 40 hours. FO was about 15-20 hours, taking it easy, FO2 was around twice that more or less.

For a well crafted game of this type I think 30 hours is a good sweet spot, too much more any more and it's just combat filler, less and it's a bit abrupt. I'd rather though have a shorter game with more replayability(different methods of play, choices, whatever) than some 100 hour linear grindfest(yes I include Bioware "all the choices in the last 15 minutes" in this).
Sandbox style games can be longer: took me 45 hours to do Risen and I still would have wanted more, so that's about the minimum for a sandbox I'd say.
Old style blob crawlers should also be roughly this length as a general rule, as they depend also on exploration and building up the party as an end in itself as much as the quest(s).

 

[Ruprekt]

You all play these games way faster than me

I took 80hrs + to complete dragon age.

 

[CraigCWB]

This is where you lie. It's a fact that you CANNOT see everything in one playthrough of ME2. So, stop the bullshitz start the truthz.

You're just arguing semantics when you try to claim that the mutually exclusive dialogue choices and other gimmicks like that qualify as "unseen content". Oh, and how about those minor league "alternate endings"?

In FO2 there were a lot of quests that could easily be missed. I found quests (and locations) on my third play through that I hadn't even noticed on my first two games.

That said, both Fallout and Fallout 2 were much too short. Compounding that problem was the fact that in FO2 the whole western half of the map (which is the second half of the game) was an over-the-top monty haul style "hurry up and finish already!" design. If the game had been twice as long and of a consistent quality throughout, I probably would have had my fill on one go-round because I generally don't like to replay games. Unlike the new demographic that replays the exact same railed-shooter and the exact same dialogue trees multiple times just to get all the ridiculous "accomplishments". Oh, and lets play it several times just to "unlock" difficulty levels! Now that's real roleplaying! It would be even cooler if you had to play through once for each companion you wanted to add. And how about they make you replay it 5x before you can customize your character? I bet that would be popular too! And if they made people play it 10x before they could play a female character their sales would go through the roof for sure. Oh, wait. Cancel those last two items.

This and the DLCs are just marketing gimmicks where the developers keep people playing - and talking about - their games much longer than they have any in-game reason too. It's a cheap tactic and one that unfortunately seems to work.

 

[Volourn]

"That said, both Fallout and Fallout 2 were much too short."

FO2 isn't bad for length. Don't lump it in with FO1.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

"I knew that I missed a lot of stuff in F1&2 after first playtrough and I wanted to do that stuff, not the same thing with ME2."

This is where you lie. It's a fact that you CANNOT see everything in one playthrough of ME2. So, stop the bullshitz start the truthz.

I'm not talking about there being real and faux choices - I simply didn't care enough about them in ME2 to do a second playthrough.

 

[commie]

snip

I don't understand. Fallout 2 is too short for you, yet you seemed to enjoy finding new quests on a third playthrough and the fact that you missed so much stuff shows that really the game couldn't have been too short, just that you skipped a lot of it. On the other hand if FO2 was longer, then you'd only bother to play it once as it would be too much for you. Presumably you'd live with missing out on quests and locations then.
How does that work?

"I knew that I missed a lot of stuff in F1&2 after first playtrough and I wanted to do that stuff, not the same thing with ME2."

This is where you lie. It's a fact that you CANNOT see everything in one playthrough of ME2. So, stop the bullshitz start the truthz.

I'm not talking about there being real and faux choices - I simply didn't care enough about them in ME2 to do a second playthrough.

The thing with Bioware choices is that you only need to quicksave before picking one and then reloading to pick the other in most cases. Rarely you'll find some character you spared instead of killed that will tell you thanks and that's it. Hardly worth grinding through the whole game again for something like this.

 

[Lord Haw Haw]

Maybe she shouldn't play rpgs

I'm betting she doesn't. This broad embodies everything that's wrong with the games industry.

 

[DalekFlay]

The thing that confuses me, and I have said this before, is that in other interviews and forum comments they say the combat is exactly the same as DA:O on the PC. Does this mean they actually made the two versions meaningfully different? If so that might be more praiseworthy than condemning really.

Though I fully expect one or the other ("still the same on PC" or "more of an action game") to be hyperbole.

 

[CraigCWB]

I don't understand. Fallout 2 is too short for you, yet you seemed to enjoy finding new quests on a third playthrough and the fact that you missed so much stuff shows that really the game couldn't have been too short, just that you skipped a lot of it. On the other hand if FO2 was longer, then you'd only bother to play it once as it would be too much for you. Presumably you'd live with missing out on quests and locations then. How does that work?

It works for me because knowing that there are things out there that I haven't found and that I never will find helps me with the "suspension of disbelief" thing, and helps me believe it's an actual alternate reality and not just a game. I'm not a completionist. And I actually enjoy playing games and having things to do for as long as I like, until I'm ready to stop playing at which point I can proceed to the end game. That's not possible in games where there's only x number of things you could possibly do and the completed content is inert. That's one of the reasons I prefer sandbox games these days. My ideal game would be something like a combination of the recipe Bioware uses and the recipe Bethesda uses. Since nobody is doing that, I'll take a sandbox Bethesda game over being run through the barely-interactive storylines of a Bioware title.

I remember when a lot of gamers were like me, and developers were actually complaining on usenet that a lot of people weren't even finishing their games... and used that as a justification to try to force the player to finish the game by making them short in length and linear in content. "Linear" used to be a bad thing for RPGS... what happened to that? Developers used to jump through hoops trying to find ways to let the player go off the beaten track and do things at their own pace and in their own way.

 

[waywardOne]

this is not your father's bioware.