Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[AwesomeButton]

Here's a non-controversial statement: DA2 was a

of epic proportions and possibly the most faggy game ever made.

^ This is from the guy defending the virtues of the gay vikigns Ass Creed.

 

[Atlantico]

Here's a non-controversial statement: DA2 was a

of epic proportions and possibly the most faggy game ever made.

^ This is from the guy defending the virtues of the gay vikigns Ass Creed.

Only in your mind faggot.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Here's a non-controversial statement: DA2 was a

of epic proportions and possibly the most faggy game ever made.

^ This is from the guy defending the virtues of the gay vikigns Ass Creed.

Only in your mind faggot.

The posts are right there in the Valhalla thread, but who cares really.

Anyway, to stay on topic. Back when I played DA2 I had three major reasons to be apalled by it. The fact it wasn't continuing the Warden's story. All the cringy romance shit with gays and whatnot thrown in. The small scale and reuse of areas. Now when I'm thinking about it, I already know the first, the second has become pretty much the norm in RPGs, and only the third is still valid.

Meanwhile its good sides - the story and the C&C remain and seem to have become more valued by players 10 years on.

Sure, DA2 was a disaster in how it was generally received, so much so that in the DAI campaign Bioware underscored that they have moved away from DA2 and are purportedly going back to the "more of DA:O" concept.

 

[Volourn]

"MEA is a good game for a Mass Effect game, but if you don't play Mass Effect games, that's neither here nor there.

For fans of the original Mass Effect, MEA is actually really good."

Complete utter bullshit.

MEA sucks. PERIOD

 

[AwesomeButton]

Hey Roguey I'm curious about your opinion of DA2.

 

[Kruno]

Hey Roguey I'm curious about your opinion of DA2.

Best cRPG in existence!

 

[Morality Games]

DA2 was pretty much Bioware's run at a Dragon Age version of Planescape: Torment.

- it had similar shoestring production resources (get it done fast, get it done cheap, use existing assets -- specifically graphic engines -- as much as possible)

- it leaned hard into companion/character-driven storytelling and Influence systems (the Influence system in Planescape: Torment was invisible, but quite robust and similar to DA2 in terms of overall design)

- it stripped down and streamlined the tactics and world/character building of Dragon Age: Origins and more into action-RPG territory (Planescape: Torment did something similar with 2E D&D Baldur's Gate)

- it leaned hard into visual novel concepts (Chris Avellone cited jRPGs specifically Chrono Trigger as an influence in building the "architecture" of Planescape: Torment narrative, but Chrono Trigger's narrative was leaning into visual novels)

- it leaned hard into reusing environments and set pieces and was a pretty small world overall -- similarly, multiple questlines tracked through the same environments over and over again in Planescape: Torment because those environments were all the developers had time to make

 

[BruceVC]

Here's a non-controversial statement: DA2 was a

of epic proportions and possibly the most faggy game ever made.

^ This is from the guy defending the virtues of the gay vikigns Ass Creed.

Only in your mind faggot.

The posts are right there in the Valhalla thread, but who cares really.

Anyway, to stay on topic. Back when I played DA2 I had three major reasons to be apalled by it. The fact it wasn't continuing the Warden's story. All the cringy romance shit with gays and whatnot thrown in. The small scale and reuse of areas. Now when I'm thinking about it, I already know the first, the second has become pretty much the norm in RPGs, and only the third is still valid.

Meanwhile its good sides - the story and the C&C remain and seem to have become more valued by players 10 years on.

Sure, DA2 was a disaster in how it was generally received, so much so that in the DAI campaign Bioware underscored that they have moved away from DA2 and are purportedly going back to the "more of DA:O" concept.

DA2 had some great Romance arcs like Isabella

I enjoyed DA2 but it did have some lazy design components like I remember the dungeon designs being reused and boring. But the narrative was compelling with the progression of Hawke through his life and then the Magi vs Templars was an interesting theme

I would rate it 55/100 ?

 

[AwesomeButton]

DA2 had some great Romance arcs like Isabella

I enjoyed DA2 but it did have some lazy design components like I remember the dungeon designs being reused and boring. But the narrative was compelling with the progression of Hawke through his life and then the Magi vs Templars was an interesting theme

I would rate it 55/100 ?

I think that's pretty much the mainstream opinion. And my argument is that released today, and free of the burden of the expectations which it carried 10 years ago, it would have been received better. I don't remember examples I can quote, but I'm willing to bet its characters (regardless of one's sensitivity to gays and cringe romance) are better developed than what passes for "golden classics" from "the studio known for its good writing".

 

[Roguey]

Hey Roguey I'm curious about your opinion of DA2.

Addressed a lot of flaws with DA:O but also needlessly added a bunch of its own.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Really, like what flaws?

 

[Roguey]

Really, like what flaws?

Mages and warriors don't get enough incentive to put points into anything other than magic/strength (and enough dex to meet requirements for sword&shield or dual-wielding) whereas rogues have to reach 20 strength to wear the best light armor and sink a bunch of points into cunning and dexterity. Bioware addressed this problem by making only two stats matter for each class. So funny.

Speech as a win button. Removed and good riddance.

As with many RPGs, resources start out as something to consider, then become trivial midway through. The option to win fights with poor tactics simply by slamming down health and mana potions shouldn't exist. For the sequel they gave 'em a 30 second cooldown instead of 5 and closed the exploit that allowed you to ignore the paltry five second cooldown by drinking a different kind of potion. This decision deeply upset a number of posters at the BSN. I say to hell with 'em. They're as bad as people who want degenerate resting.

I completely ignored traps and bombs so no comments there (they seem to be the kind of thing one would only want to use with a no-mage party), but it's terrible how there are some redundant and just plain-bad choices when it comes to poisons like aciding coating, adder's kiss, fleshrot, and soulrot coating (and the lack of transparency in the unmodded version makes this even more annoying). Thankfully streamlined into something sensible in II. It's also nice how they fixed the exploit that allowed you to stack multiple coatings of different poisons.

I don't know what they were thinking with arcane warriors and shapeshifters. With one they thought "Let's give mages the option of being great fighters so they have zero weaknesses!" and with the other they thought "Let's give mages an ability that makes them unable to cast any spells! People like auto-attacking with mages, right?" Good thing those were removed.

Massive hammers like cone of cold, mana clash, and storm of the century that turn decent set-ups into nails. The first was nerfed (but testing on nightmare, I noticed cold-immune enemies still have a chance of getting frozen; whyoware?), the others removed.

The penalty for getting knocked down is an injury. In O, they were trivial, in II it took off 20% of your max health each time.

DA2 had that too, only it improved it by having them take out a percentage of your total mana instead of a flat value. Endgame mana values in DA:O = holding all the sustainables.

Might be some other things that I no longer remember, but an attempt was made

 

[Lacrymas]

DA:O's character building doesn't seem to have been their first priority, it's obvious the setting and writing is where the focus was and the combat system in general feels like an afterthought. That's why a lot of stuff in there is contradictory or simple to a fault. If you start systematically analyzing it, I'm sure you'll soon find out there's no consistency or coherent idea/structure.

 

[Dodo1610]

DAO was in development for ~5 years. It was even planned to feature online Coop, so I guess the only constant part during development was Gaider's writing, everything else was likely reworked multiple times during development.

 

[Roguey]

We have had this discussion before.

Half the specializations were dumb because they were underpowered or relied on weird stats which are not worth pumping only for that spec (Templar). This is why I say almost everything is low effort, it's as if nobody playtested these specializations, not to mention the bugs.

DA:O's system wasn't designed with power gaming in mind, that was intentional. Outright stated by Zoeller:

(DA2 and beyond ended up going for class balance and dps equality for good or ill )

 

[AwesomeButton]

DA:O's character building doesn't seem to have been their first priority, it's obvious the setting and writing is where the focus was and the combat system in general feels like an afterthought. That's why a lot of stuff in there is contradictory or simple to a fault. If you start systematically analyzing it, I'm sure you'll soon find out there's no consistency or coherent idea/structure.

Yes, I don't think DA:O was meant to be played as more than a very casual game. If someone is obsessing over its lack of balance, he is barking up the wrong tree.

 

[Roguey]

Yes, I don't think DA:O was meant to be played as more than a very casual game. If someone is obsessing over its lack of balance, he is barking up the wrong tree.

DA:O's difficulty filtered a lot of people though. Like many RPGs it requires understanding, but not mastery.

 

[Delterius]

When DA:O opens up you're supposed to go to Redcliffe and the Mage's Tower first, I believe. Those were the lowest level zones. The devs put a 'hard' battle at the entrance of Orzammar as a way of telling the player to maybe go elsewhere and level up first. And I'm pretty sure most people just thought the game's difficulty curve was wonky when they got their asses kicked.

On one hand yeah I agree that DA:O was never meant to be a hardcore character builder. But what character system it had was super rough. One thing is having an unbalanced game. Say, you can make an unkillable Arcane Warrior by picking certain spells and wearing certain armor. The game is very deliberate about what spells you can cast with a normal weapon out and you can see a design pattern there. Less so with the spells themselves. There's so much broken shit in the mage spell tree its crazy and that's not even counting the bugs. Mana Clash one shots everything with mana. Chain Lightning's damage doesn't even scale. The damage formula is incomplete. Cone of Cold interrupts any monster in the game, including Dragons. Etc.

 

[Decado]

DA:O was the last good Bioware RPG (and even so, still had problems). ME3 was not an RPG, but they did make a surprisingly good 3rd person shooter, if you can ignore the faux grimdark story, bad voice acting, and highly annoying liberal Canadian sensibilities. The multiplayer was fun as hell.

DA2 and DAI are pure garbage. Mass Effect Andromeda was a studio destroying shit filled diaper.

 

[BruceVC]

Yes, I don't think DA:O was meant to be played as more than a very casual game. If someone is obsessing over its lack of balance, he is barking up the wrong tree.

DA:O's difficulty filtered a lot of people though. Like many RPGs it requires understanding, but not mastery.

Roguey I gave DA:O a well deserved 70/100 on the globally respected " BruceVC game rating " system

People pay me huge amounts of money for my opinion on games but I am not going to expect money for my views on Codex because I really like you guys

 

[Atlantico]

DA:O was the last good Bioware RPG (and even so, still had problems). ME3 was not an RPG, but they did make a surprisingly good 3rd person shooter, if you can ignore the faux grimdark story, bad voice acting, and highly annoying liberal Canadian sensibilities. The multiplayer was fun as hell.

DA2 and DAI are pure garbage.

Sure. No argument there.

Mass Effect Andromeda was a studio destroying shit filled diaper.

That's just NPC regurgitation. One of those things people say with their brain turned off and everyone claps like seals.

MEA was a good game actually. I've only ever seen anyone criticize MEA for being DAI, but it isn't DAI.

Even the game director came from outside Bioware and it was made outside Edmonton. It was made specifically with the original ME in mind, and that shows.

This pearlclutching "OMG MEA was sooo bad lulz" is just nonsense and it's a damn shame, because it was a rare occasion of Bioware course-correcting to a more classic game sensibility instead of purely the danger-hair cinematic blowhard experience and cover-shooting.

Didn't you think it was somewhat suspicious that even the danger-hairs were kumbaya-ing with the neckbeards about how aweful MEA was? More than a little bit fishy.

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

DA:O's difficulty filtered a lot of people though.

What!

 

[Roguey]

When DA:O opens up you're supposed to go to Redcliffe and the Mage's Tower first, I believe. Those were the lowest level zones. The devs put a 'hard' battle at the entrance of Orzammar as a way of telling the player to maybe go elsewhere and level up first. And I'm pretty sure most people just thought the game's difficulty curve was wonky when they got their asses kicked.

On one hand yeah I agree that DA:O was never meant to be a hardcore character builder. But what character system it had was super rough. One thing is having an unbalanced game. Say, you can make an unkillable Arcane Warrior by picking certain spells and wearing certain armor. The game is very deliberate about what spells you can cast with a normal weapon out and you can see a design pattern there. Less so with the spells themselves. There's so much broken shit in the mage spell tree its crazy and that's not even counting the bugs. Mana Clash one shots everything with mana. Chain Lightning's damage doesn't even scale. The damage formula is incomplete. Cone of Cold interrupts any monster in the game, including Dragons. Etc.

I'm sure that was a contributing factor, but even if you follow the intended path, normal-difficulty-to-normal-difficulty, DA:O is the most demanding game Bioware has ever released on a console.

What!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/920668-dragon-age-origins/stats
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/xbox360/950918-dragon-age-origins/stats
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps3/950916-dragon-age-origins/stats

30% of gamefaqs normies think it's tough, only 5% think it's easy.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

MEA was a good game actually. I've only ever seen anyone criticize MEA for being DAI, but it isn't DAI.

MEA seems better in the gameplay department than DAI (which I'd attribute to the devs designing it with multiplayer in mind), but as a storyfag I'd still say DAI > MEA. Didn't like the Angara(ns?), didn't like the main plot and most definitely didn't like the protagonist (who is Witcher tier predefined, but with a cringey personality unlike Shepard's).

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/920668-dragon-age-origins/stats
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/xbox360/950918-dragon-age-origins/stats
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps3/950916-dragon-age-origins/stats

30% of gamefaqs normies think it's tough, only 5% think it's easy.

Thank you Roguey anon! Good strong friend anon! It is not difficulty game anon! Is not!