Solarnyi
Novice
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2014
- Messages
- 5
Say what you will about DA 2 (and there's a lot to say lmao) but with regard to lore and overall art design, I consider it a valiant attempt to solidify Origins' mishmash of tropes into something a bit more distinct and recognizable. The art director did surprisingly well considering the timetable and what he was given.I might've been too hard on it, it's not a bad game and in hindsight it's a masterpiece compared to pretty much everything Bioware made after it. It was also Gaider before Gaider got SJW brain disease as well as the other writers.
The good thing is since Origins was made as a standalone game it's very easy to just go with its endings and pretend the sequels don't exist. They don't match with anything in Origins at all be it gameplay, design or lore so both sequels feel like they're different franchises anyway.
Gaider or the new writers can run all the damage control they want but there's no possible way they meant for Inquisition's retcons all along. They wouldn't have written Sten if they always totally meant for the Qunari to be sex positive trans accepting pacifists.
Unfortunately, the suits interpreted the inevitable backlash in the stupidest possible way - because obviously people weren't pissed off by the plethora of things caused by rushing out a 40-hour RPG in 18 months (gutted classes and itemization, copy-pasted maps, etc.). Instead of continuing to iterate while simply giving devs enough time to create a polished product (production values used to be a selling point for nu-BW), they threw the baby out with the bathwater to make a single-player MMO frankenstein of a game so so desperate for that Skyrim clout.
Robust friendship/rivalry systems for companion interaction were supposed to be the next evolutionary step for storyfag RPG-lites, I'll never forgive them for doing a complete 180 on that.