Preview Dragon Age II Review Tidbits

[sgc_meltdown]

Codexers would sooner buy a 360 than question their own tastes

I can question your tastes for you and you can buy me a 360. Win-win for us both.

 

[Esquilax]

oh come on VD, both DA and witcher fail on many rpg aspects, but when you take the most important part into consideration, one that made PS:T, BaK, MoTB, VtmB claim the position around here (story, atmosphere, narration, you know what i mean, i'm no native) then picking the better one is a non-issue

oh, and i remember shit from 90hours wasted in DA, just this uneasy feeling of... boredom

Well, you played the motherfucker for 90 hours, so clearly you weren't bored enough to stop playing the fucking thing.

I thought Origins was a decent RPG, and certainly a lot better than I expected. I really thought that if they removed a lot of the filler combat and followed through on the consequences in places like Redcliffe instead of pussing out, the game would have legitimately been very good.

I don't think it's exactly inaccurate when Vince said that DA:O was one of the best RPG's in years. Looking back, 2008 was a terrible year for RPG's and it's not like 2009 was that good, either. It's not like Origins had much competition - it kinda won by default. Really, the most recent RPG similar to Origins that was better than it was probably Mask of the Betrayer in 2007.

Vince, I agree completely with what you mentioned about the quest design in Redcliffe. It would have been perfect if they had put in consequences for you fucking around at the Circle Tower. The stuff that you mentioned is very good, but I think that the lack of follow through here really hurt things, especially because NPC's repeatedly mentioned that the Demon would likely return if you went away to the Tower. This is such a huge flaw that I find it impossible to ignore.

It really made a lot of BioWare's attempts to make the setting dark and gritty look really futile. If I can save Connor AND save the town of Redcliffe, or likewise get a Dalish Army AND cure all the werewolves, it affects my ability to take BioWare's "dark fantasy" setting seriously.

Also, the arl totally shrugs it off if you KOed his old lady with a right cross and slit his little boy's throat. As ballsy as it was to include the death of children, this was pretty jarring. While I understand that the story needs to continue somehow, I would not have minded nearly as much if the game didn't present these things as huge, dramatic choices that you need to think really hard about.

 

[Esquilax]

As far as quests that are as well designed or better than Redcliffe, I'd say that the Hill Tribe quest in MotB is a good example - fantastic stuff. Entering the City of Judgment provided a ton of interesting and different options, as well. The latter is particularly nasty if you have been bluffing Kaelyn the whole game.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Yep. Especially in quests like Calling Dr. Grout or the Nosferatu Warrens.

Why focus on those examples? Why not looking elsewhere, like getting the documents from the ship? Via
- disciplines like domination or dementation
- social skills like persuasion
- sneaking or obfuscating
- slaughtering everyone

Or getting in the museum via
- slaughtering everyone
- sneaking
- obfuscating
- superior popamole skills (avoid the cameras and goons by observing their routines plus mad mouse&keyboard skillz)

Additionally, unlike DA, Bloodlines didn't require much killing at all, even in the warrens you have to kill exactly 2 creatures everything else is optional.
Plus the game supported skill usage way better, hacking, lockpicking, sneaking, different social skills. Dragon Age has 1 social skill, which seems cool until you figure out that you will get the same coercion lines even if you have zero coercion skill. Sure, odds are you'll fail the attempt to persuade the NPC - if it doesn't matter anyway - otherwise you'll succeed despite zero skill. Examples:

Persuade the Arl in favor of Jowan, outcome doesn't matter because if you fail the Arl will execute Jowan who then disappears from the game, whereas if you succeed Jowan will be brought to the circle to be executed and to disappear from the game. In this instance you're allowed to fail your check.

Another one, freeing Sten. You're allowed to fail your persuasion with the priestess because if you do fail Leliana will make it work.

But what if the persuasion is important? Like persuading the templar to bring you over the lake to the circle mages? You will not fail your persuasion attempt even with 0 skill.

Same on Taris - the goal is to "save" Bastila. You talk to the Beks, they send you to fetch the accelerator from the Vulkars which really means killing the Vulkars' leader since the fight is unavoidable. You fight your way through to the leader, who gives you your single choice, compliments of Bioware, kill him or go back and kill the Beks' leader. The choice depends entirely on whether you want the Dark Side points or the Light Side points. You don't really care about the choice since you're just passing through.

OK, I'll raise you this: getting the holy ash to heal the Arl.
- to get the location of the village you have to do 1 thing: expose&kill the cultist in Brother Genitivi's (sp?) house, no other approaches supported
- you enter the village, discover their terrible secret and slay everyone
- to proceed you have to kill the boss in the church who has the magic key, no other way possible
- you proceed through the temple dungeon (linear corridors) killing everyone (even SoZ did let you disguise as cultists in the final temple and do the whole temple in a bluffing/subterfuge/sneaking manner)
- you encounter the cultist boss and finally get to the 1 choice you have, desecrate the ash or not, you can still change you mind later
- you do the rest of the linear dungeon until you finally make said choice, desecrate or not, doesn't matter for the Arl anyway because you will get the ash to heal him either way (does the choice depend on whether you want the reaver specialisation or not?)

On the bright side there are some consequenses to your 1 choice, pissing off Wynne/Leliana or get -5 approval with Morrigan because you didn't jump at the opportunity to desecrate something (here take this gold ring bitch, +6 approval with Morrigan).

 

[Darth Roxor]

the whole C&C thing is kinda misunderstood. In Fallout, which, basically, introduced the C&C concept, most consequences were where they belong - in the ending slides. That's what made the game interesting. You were shown the effect of your choices on the gameworld.

Nice try, Gaider. Now give the account back to the real VD, okay?

 

[Vault Dweller]

As far as quests that are as well designed or better than Redcliffe, I'd say that the Hill Tribe quest in MotB is a good example - fantastic stuff. Entering the City of Judgment provided a ton of interesting and different options, as well. The latter is particularly nasty if you have been bluffing Kaelyn the whole game.

I disagree.

The Hill Tribe quest is very simple. It gives you an interesting option and it supports the evil path well, but when it comes to quest design, it's not much.

- if spared Okku - they attack
- if killed Okku - they offer to teach you a handy ability if you lure in some people to be eaten. There are several people you don't care about whom you can lure in. You do that, come back, gain the ability, either leave or devour the leader of the tribe.

So, basically, kill Okku, yes/no, if no, combat, if yes, bring people (the game places a merchant family near the city gates so you don't have to look far), learn ability.

 

[Grunker]

Any particular reason you're not responding to VoD's excellent points?

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm doing it now, oh the impatient one, but I'm at work and constantly interrupted.

 

[Grunker]

I'm doing it now, oh the impatient one, but I'm at work and constantly interrupted.

Forget what I said. Don't reply to him. Finish AoD instead :D

 

[Jaesun]

I'm doing it now, oh the impatient one, but I'm at work and constantly interrupted.

Forget what I said. Don't reply to him. Finish AoD instead :D

 

[J_C]

I'm doing it now, oh the impatient one, but I'm at work and constantly interrupted.

Forget what I said. Don't reply to him. Finish AoD instead :D

Not another dragon! What happened to your avatar? Slowly the dragons will conquer us.

 

[Volourn]

"Vince, I agree completely with what you mentioned about the quest design in Redcliffe. It would have been perfect if they had put in consequences for you fucking around at the Circle Tower."

Um.. there is consequence for that.. leave Redcliffe and the village gets wiped out and the townsfolk become undead. Not much darker consequences than that.

Oh, you emant, no cosnequence if you got to tower after entering the castle? Surem, that be nice if there was, but *shrug*, still doesn't change the fact that this quest is one of the best quests ever in a RPG. Nothing is perfect, and anything can be improved.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Yep. Especially in quests like Calling Dr. Grout or the Nosferatu Warrens.

Why focus on those examples? Why not looking elsewhere, like getting the documents from the ship?

Because the vast majority of quests are fairly simplistic "kill x". Take the plaguebearers' questline, for example.

You're told to find out what's happening. Promising. Exploring the apartment building and talking to people eventually leads you to Jezebel, who's staying at a local hotel.

Your only choice is at the lobby. You can either convince the clerk to give you the key or you can sneak in and get a duplicate key. God forbid, you just go up and knock on her door.

Anyway, you go in, have a nice chat with her, which, in the worst traditions of bad design, ends up with her attacking you. I think that was the first time when I realized that my Toreador, created for the Masquerade's world of intrigue, might not be the best character for this game.

On to the next plaguebearer. This time you start with bums. Once again - sigh - your only choice is how to get the right bum to tell you what he knows, which magically unlocks the area where you need to be (another mark of bad design, along with doors that can't be opened even if your security skill is maxed). You can persuade him, intimidate him, or just give him $20. Boy, am I glad that I've invested in Persuasion. Saved me twenty bucks right there.

Go down to the sewers, enjoy the scenery. Brother Kanker shows up and we have a nice chat where he tells me the equivalent of "but wait, there is more!". When Kanker's done talking, he, of course, attacks me. It's getting harder and harder to have civilized conversations in Bloodlines.

Finally, the fiend is dead. What is this? A flyer! Nay, it's a clue. Now the building with the zombies is magically unlocked. I'm a master of persuasion, intimidation, and seduction ("Hey, what's an ugly thing like you is doing in a place like this?"), but I can't talk my way through (or fight my way through, for that matter) without the magical flyer which can only be obtained by killing Kanker. Splendid!

On to the next. Armed with the magical flyer, I enter the building. Waves upon waves of zombies. That's some great design right there. Eventually you get to Bishop Vick. He tells me his sad story and then attacks me, no matter what.

Add to that the above mentioned Grout's quest, which doesn't have enough shit in it to be called a quest. Or the Leopold Society, or the Snuff questline. Most of the time the game plays like a shooter with stats. You can't even loot bodies and pick guns until the game decides that it's time you have one.

Same on Taris - the goal is to "save" Bastila. You talk to the Beks, they send you to fetch the accelerator from the Vulkars which really means killing the Vulkars' leader since the fight is unavoidable. You fight your way through to the leader, who gives you your single choice, compliments of Bioware, kill him or go back and kill the Beks' leader. The choice depends entirely on whether you want the Dark Side points or the Light Side points. You don't really care about the choice since you're just passing through.

OK, I'll raise you this: getting the holy ash to heal the Arl.
- to get the location of the village you have to do 1 thing: expose&kill the cultist in Brother Genitivi's (sp?) house, no other approaches supported
- you enter the village, discover their terrible secret and slay everyone
- to proceed you have to kill the boss in the church who has the magic key, no other way possible
- you proceed through the temple dungeon (linear corridors) killing everyone (even SoZ did let you disguise as cultists in the final temple and do the whole temple in a bluffing/subterfuge/sneaking manner)
- you encounter the cultist boss and finally get to the 1 choice you have, desecrate the ash or not, you can still change you mind later
- you do the rest of the linear dungeon until you finally make said choice, desecrate or not, doesn't matter for the Arl anyway because you will get the ash to heal him either way (does the choice depend on whether you want the reaver specialisation or not?)

The difference is that KOTOR doesn't get any better. Dragon Age does. Not every quest is a pinnacle of awesomeness, obviously, but overall, the quality is much better.

Even if we compare the two examples above, Taris vs the Urn, the choice is more interesting. On Taris you're offered to choose between 2 gangs and are given little reasons to care. Who really cares which gang is gone? How would that affect Taris (well, Taris is going bye-bye, but that's a different story)? What's the deep impact of your choice? What are the moral considerations? None.

The Urn is different. It's a major relic and most likely you'll run into knights searching for it or hear about it. There is a huge difference between being offered to pick a gang to wipe out and being offered to consecrate a major relic. One doesn't make you think, one does.

Unlike Taris, the quest doesn't end there. Other then getting to fight a dragon if you kill the cultists, and the choice in the final trial, which can turn the guardian hostile, you get to make another moral decision:

"Just when you think that the quest is over, the scholar-monk presents you with the final choice. He is a true believer, he's dedicated his life to finding that Urn. Now that he has, he wants to let the whole world know where the ashes are. He doesn't think of the potential consequences that will follow such a decision.

So you are faced with the choice, not of altruistic good vs villainous evil, but also whether the end justifies the means. Do you agree with him, or do you kill a good man to keep the ashes' location a secret? Whether it is for your own gain or to prevent a far greater evil that may or may not happen, how you perceive this choice is important, and makes for a tough decision."

As I said in my review, this quest could have been better and Bio missed a great opportunity to let you trade Arl's men and support for the cultists and their dragon, but it's a much better quest than the Taris one. It's better designed, better integrated into the lore and the main quest, and has more choices.

 

[waywardOne]

moral choice with zero in-game consequences beyond a line of dialog. of course it's going to seem better if you can LARP your way through that kind of shit.

yeah, keep making that game thing or whatever.

 

[Sceptic]

Who are you and what have you done to Vault Dweller

 

[sgc_meltdown]

The Urn is different. It's a major relic and most likely you'll run into knights searching for it or hear about it. There is a huge difference between being offered to pick a gang to wipe out and being offered to consecrate a major relic. One doesn't make you think, one does.

----

So you are faced with the choice, not of altruistic good vs villainous evil, but also whether the end justifies the means.

That's pretty much what I said in my first post to you here. Giving a choice in and of itself is pretty much choosing a choosing your action version of a bioware dialog tree without implementing believable design, coherent lore and taking related characters into consideration.

 

[racofer]

You guys are all wrong.

Bioware RPGs are all about the experience of being in the game world, feeling for your companions and getting emotionally engaged with the events of the massive storyline their games possess.

 

[Vault Dweller]

moral choice with zero in-game consequences beyond a line of dialog. of course it's going to seem better if you can LARP your way through that kind of shit.

yeah, keep making that game thing or whatever.

You mean like in Fallout when you decide whether or not to fix the pump for the ghouls after taking the water chip?

Most choices in Fallout didn't have "in-game consequences beyond a line of dialogue".

 

[circ]

I thought Origins was a decent RPG, and certainly a lot better than I expected. I really thought that if they removed a lot of the filler combat and followed through on the consequences in places like Redcliffe instead of pussing out, the game would have legitimately been very good.

You're clearly retarded. How to turn DA:O into atleast a mediocre RPG: Remove Alistair, Morrigan, Zevran, Wynne and Leliana. Remove all areas and get a team with some programming experience to do it instead. Hire artists with actual schooling. Get a director with some D&D experience if possible to come up with skills that aren't so dull and unbalanced. Also get same director to come up with names that aren't so utterly shitty and an actual plot. Hire a team, obviously europeans, to write up interesting side quests, just one will do.

 

[Esquilax]

That's pretty much what I said in my first post to you here. Giving a choice in and of itself is pretty much choosing a choosing your action version of a bioware dialog tree without implementing believable design, coherent lore and taking related characters into consideration.

Yeah, I agree with you. BioWare likes to take the easy way out. Really, if they didn't puss out on the Redcliffe quest line, it would have been really good. As it stands, I can only chuckle at BioWare's feeble attempts to be grimdark.

Sure, it still would have left a really tedious, linear slog through The Fade and Deep Roads, but at least that quest would have been very solid.

You mentioned lore as well. For me, it wasn't so much that the lore was coherent or not, that wasn't so much the problem*, it was just that the world just wasn't interesting to begin with. I played through once and had a decent time with it, but everything I saw in the world-building, I remembered seeing done elsewhere, and better. Mages and the really bland-looking Fade seemed like a poor man's version of WH40k's psykers and The Warp. The Battle of Helm's Deep ripoff at Ostagar - hell, the whole thing was LOTR. A ton of stuff like this.

* Not to say that there weren't really stupid inconsistencies. I can't think of many, because I don't really give a shit or notice this kind of stuff that much, but one that annoyed me was that in the beginning, its mentioned that darkspawn can corrupt and infect others with their blood, yet you and your buddies are practically fucking showering in the stuff the whole goddamn game. It would have been so cool if party members could become infected and the options it would create. But no, that would actually be interesting.

 

[Esquilax]

You're clearly retarded. How to turn DA:O into atleast a mediocre RPG: Remove Alistair, Morrigan, Zevran, Wynne and Leliana. Remove all areas and get a team with some programming experience to do it instead. Hire artists with actual schooling. Get a director with some D&D experience if possible to come up with skills that aren't so dull and unbalanced. Also get same director to come up with names that aren't so utterly shitty and an actual plot. Hire a team, obviously europeans, to write up interesting side quests, just one will do.

Wait, circ, aren't you one of the guys who played DA:O a bunch of times and complained about how shitty it was? I distinctly remember you making a thread like that. Haha, OK, I'll play along.

Maybe "very good" is too strong, but you add some serious consequences to certain areas (i.e. Cultists providing you with an army if you desecrate the ashes, Redcliffe becoming zombie food if you opt to save Connor, Dalish getting pissed at you and refusing to provide an army if you remove the werewolf curse), parts of The Fade and Deep Roads and you've got a solid RPG there.

Regarding the characters, they could annoy the fuck out of me with their 12-year old behaviour, but they had their moments. Besides, you did have the option to boot them out of your party. AFAIK, you could kick Morrigan out after Lothering and Alistair was the only one who you had to take along. All of the others were optional. I actually liked Sten and Shale.

The art style was pretty bland, for sure. The artists didn't exactly get a really unique world to work in, either. I suppose it didn't bug me that much, though I could see how the bland atmosphere could definitely be a huge turn-off for a lot of people.

Which skills did you feel were unbalanced? I played as dual-wielding rogue and I noticed I did way more damage than Leliana, the archer. Archers seemed to be pretty awful in the game, actually.It also seemed like two-hander warriors didn't do much damage. Obviously, mages owned everybody. The lack of balance didn't irritate me so much because the game wasn't really that hard and I usually give some leeway for single-player games with regards to balance. . You could still have a pretty powerful warrior in the game, though playing as an archer would be tough. The real weakness was that there weren't nearly enough spells and abilities in the game, IMO.

Chanter's board quests were shit, no argument there., Kill X of Y, basically.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

This is the best fucking design I've EVER seen in an RPG. If someone disagrees, I'd like to see an example of a better quest.

Its odd that I agree with you and I enjoyed the origin that I played too. Problem is everything else about the game was meh to shit.

After that quest with variant paths, choice and enough consequence it sat on it. After that the design let the combat carry the gameplay but the combat stunk. It was like BG 2 with a third of the spells, unbalanced, unrealistic ranged combat, level scaling, terrible encounters, monsters that all fought the same, hp songes, etc.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Its odd that I agree with you and I enjoyed the origin that I played too. Problem is everything else about the game was meh to shit.

While we're complaining about linear storylines like the first real chapter of witcher, saving the circle isn't exactly freedom city either. Oh boy each time we go through this place we have to go through the tower and then go through the fade and do the shapeshifting puzzle save our friends limbo, all the while fighting room after room of darkspawndemonspawn. There's a reason why the 'skip the fade' mod is so damn popular and recommended.

 

[Jaesun]

Its odd that I agree with you and I enjoyed the origin that I played too. Problem is everything else about the game was meh to shit.

While we're complaining about linear storylines like the first real chapter of witcher, saving the circle isn't exactly freedom city either. Oh boy each time we go through this place we have to go through the tower and then go through the fade and do the shapeshifting puzzle save our friends limbo, all the while fighting room after room of darkspawndemonspawn. There's a reason why the 'skip the fade' mod is so damn popular and recommended.

How would you have designed it differently if given the chance?

 

[circ]

Wait, circ, aren't you one of the guys who played DA:O a bunch of times and complained about how shitty it was? I distinctly remember you making a thread like that. Haha, OK, I'll play along.

I dunno what you're talking about. I tried playing through it but gave up at Ostalgiah or whatever it is because it was all just so cringe inducing, from the linear areas to the half-assed graphics to the dialogue. Some folks said it gets better, and I agree, I enjoyed the Tower of Isomething, not mage tower, but it's all downhill from there. I eventually forced myself to play through it once, still using a level 3 sword and beating the archdemon with it. How about that. I've tried to consequently play through it a second time with a lot of mods, like, but not limited to, removing the Fade, making several graphical improvements, including groupmates, etc. But I can't stomach more than dealing with the ashes quest and killing two dragons like I'm patting my own dick.

Maybe "very good" is too strong, but you add some serious consequences to certain areas (i.e. Cultists providing you with an army if you desecrate the ashes, Redcliffe becoming zombie food if you opt to save Connor, Dalish getting pissed at you and refusing to provide an army if you remove the werewolf curse), parts of The Fade and Deep Roads and you've got a solid RPG there.

Why would the cultists give a shit? There are better opportunities at consequence than the aforementioned things. And no, you will need considerably more than removing parts of two areas to make anything resembling solid. And Fade I get, but not really Deep Roads, that was actually ok compared to the extreme yawn inducing Fade. And some parts of Derp Roads actually had something bordering on gritty writing.

Regarding the characters, they could annoy the fuck out of me with their 12-year old behaviour, but they had their moments. Besides, you did have the option to boot them out of your party. AFAIK, you could kick Morrigan out after Lothering and Alistair was the only one who you had to take along. All of the others were optional. I actually liked Sten and Shale.

I didn't mention Sten because he was actually ok. Considering who did the voice work too, it was an excellent job. Shale, eh, didn't really see what all the hype was all about. Anyway booting ok, how about making characters that aren't cake eaters in the first place?

The art style was pretty bland, for sure. The artists didn't exactly get a really unique world to work in, either. I suppose it didn't bug me that much, though I could see how the bland atmosphere could definitely be a huge turn-off for a lot of people.

There was a quest in Lothering that was supposed to take place in a forest. Once there, it consisted of one tree and badly textured tiny bumps. Everything was textured like shit. Now you could understand this if it somehow cut down on load times or had a shit load of content, but it doesn't have either. Just a lot of voiced dialogue, that's shitty in the first place. Some fucking trade off. Years earlier, something like Dungeon Siege managed to make huge, seamless areas with unnoticable load times. And dare I say, the dialogue and story were a lot better, and it was shitty. How can you outperform shitty? That's award winning stuff right there. I have to ask, what in the fuck is so good about it that you actually think it's worth anything? It's facepalm after facepalm.

Which skills did you feel were unbalanced? I played as dual-wielding rogue and I noticed I did way more damage than Leliana, the archer. Archers seemed to be pretty awful in the game, actually.It also seemed like two-hander warriors didn't do much damage. Obviously, mages owned everybody. The lack of balance didn't irritate me so much because the game wasn't really that hard and I usually give some leeway for single-player games with regards to balance. . You could still have a pretty powerful warrior in the game, though playing as an archer would be tough. The real weakness was that there weren't nearly enough spells and abilities in the game, IMO.

Well, if you want an example: An assassin/dueler rogue can single handedly kill Flemeth the dragon. I actually finished the entire crawl to the Archdemon without using a single ally, mainly because I didn't know you could. As for archer, stick a rapid aim bow on the character and special arrows and it's a pretty ridiculous support character. And let's not forget, that a single blood mage can solo the entire game. Anyway, skills were boring. They were all out of the WoW handbook, meant to show off in their opinion, nifty animations and that's all. What tactics? Cone everything in sight and hack away?