Review Vault Dweller Does Dragon Age II

[Inziladun]

I convey sarcasm every day to my girlfriend via text message.

 

[sser]

Exploration, that feeling of entering a new area and marvelling at the design, of discovering hidden passages and wondering where they lead, of turning a corner and encountering something surprising, is an important aspect of RPG design that keeps the player going when everything else starts to fade into familiarity.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

WHERE'S TEH NEWSPOST

There's some weird fucking bug with Calis' old approval system. Every-time I try it works fine for me and happily creates the corresponding news item. So far it hasn't worked for anyone else. Next time you approve some content, I've changed it to output a bunch of messages. Copy-paste them and PM to me.

WHERE'S TEH NEWSPOST

Since the "system" no longer creates it automatically I had to do it manually. Which took some seconds. Thanks for your concern though.

It should have. That was changed and was thoroughly tested... If there were two, I'm gonna say it worked fine and you deleted the wrong one by mistake maybe?

 

[Elwro]

Text is always a pretty horrible medium for conveying sarcasm or sincerity.

This is either sarcastic, and so self-defeating -- or insincere :/

 

[Elwro]

WHERE'S TEH NEWSPOST

Since the "system" no longer creates it automatically I had to do it manually. Which took some seconds. Thanks for your concern though.

It should have. That was changed and was thoroughly tested... If there were two, I'm gonna say it worked fine and you deleted the wrong one by mistake maybe?

This thread is the first one. When I posted in it it was the only one visible from the forums and at the same time the one linked to the "Comment" word at the bottom of the review.

 

[Volourn]

L0L And, people complain about video game bugs.. the codex can't even post a simple review without it getting buggy. HAHAHAHA!

 

[Sulimo]

From the link to the Biosocial thread earlier:

Ah RPGCodex, the laughing stock of the gaming community.

Good stuff.

So wait, we're the laughing stock of the gaming community? I thought we were a prestigious Magazine. My heart is broken.

 

[zodden]

Good review...

I really wanted to like this game as I enjoyed the first one immensely. Now I am not even going to pirate this turkey. Maybe I will try two worlds 2 instead.

Very disappointed in Bioware-hopefully they will have done a better job with the Old Republic-we shall see.

 

[Serious_Business]

Was expecting bigger shitstorm. Am very dissapoint

 

[Xi]

This might be the shiniest turd we've ever seen. I was even tempted to touch it. Thankfully I caught a whiff before it was too late!

 

[Antihero]

Text is always a pretty horrible medium for conveying sarcasm or sincerity. Being able to put a heart, as much as you could argue that you could tell, lets you say, "OK, I'm certain with this choice. I'm not making it blind." That's very important when you want to associate yourself with a character.

One part I take exception to is the unqualified use of the word always. I can see where some one-liners might straddle the line of ambiguity, being among a variety of different sounding player choices that you can't take back. But while you could just rewrite pure text and sacrifice style for more clarity, text alone would still win out in "[Stupid Mask Icon] that's wonderful!" vs "Sarcasm: that's wonderful!" (or just "That's wonderful! <Sarcastic>"), or God forbid, let the player figure out the context themselves.

In other words, like Xi's picture above, just sprinkles on top.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Well done sir, excellent review.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Good stuff

And that Mike Laidlaw quote is pure gold. How stupid do you have to be, to be Mike Laidlaw?

 

[racofer]

Text is always a pretty horrible medium for conveying sarcasm or sincerity.

 

[Azrael the cat]

But is it good for what it is?

Did you even read the review?

NO. It isn't even good for what it is. It's rushed trash and it's insulting.

It's fucking robbery is what it is. They used their reputation to steal our money. It's like when Indiana Jones replaces that Golden Idol with a Bag of Sand in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Thanks for the sand Bioware. Enjoy your free money.

Except Indiana Jones didn't stand there accusing 4chan of trolling him when the cave started collapsing and the boulder came at him.

 

[Drakron]

How stupid do you have to be, to be Mike Laidlaw?

According to Awakening credits he is "Dragon Age Franchise Lead Designer", then again I wonder why exactly he is at BioWare ... he is credited as a Lead Writer in Jade Empire and Additional Designer in Mass Effect but beyond that (and DA:O were he is one of the Lead Designers) there is just "Special Thanks" that I have no idea what it means, oldest title I see with his name in Mobygames is NWN:HotU expansion so I would guess he was hired to work as a writer on Jade Empire.

Now consider that he was Lead Writer on Jade Empire and consider that "Text is always a pretty horrible medium for conveying sarcasm or sincerity" statement.

 

[Karmapowered]

Now consider that he was Lead Writer on Jade Empire and consider that "Text is always a pretty horrible medium for conveying sarcasm or sincerity" statement.

Jade Empire had better writing than DA2.

I am not even kidding.

I think Bioware's game would be much better off without Laidlaw, Gaider and whoever that untalented art director is.

 

[attackfighter]

This is probably the most informative and least biased DA2 review out there, good job!!!

 

[RK47]

What about the romance?

 

[RK47]

Text is always a pretty horrible medium for conveying sarcasm or sincerity.

I am going to murder someone. Seriously, if any of the fucking hacks over at Bioware are reading this, get your entire fucking company a classic literature crash course. Ever heard of fucking Hamlet? Candide?


FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

 

[DemonKing]

I convey sarcasm every day to my girlfriend via text message.

"I love you." does the trick then?

Seriously though - great review.

I can't understand why they went for the trash-mob combat after everyone complained about the overuse of such mobs in the original (obviously deisgning difficult combats take time).

I also hated the loss of the fully-texted conversation options.

The repetition of identical areas was unforgivable - I remember the genuine NERD RAGE when they reused a single small map from BG in BG2 but now it seems the lemmings will happily put up with trudging through identical caverns over and over again.

The Quest design is also retarded - I just go from location to location on the map hunting down icons on the minimap and they either give me a quest or reward me even though usually I can't remember either the quest given or what I did to receive the reward.

The less said about the inventory system, the better.

 

[Jaesun]

We are the Codex. Lower your firewalls and surrender your servers. We will add your database and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your forum will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.

 

[Cynic]

Excellent stuff, I lol'd a lot. The Dweller speaks the truth.

 

[Forest Dweller]

I'm curious how the Bioware defense squad will react to VD's review.

We'll wait and see what happens when someone posts a link in Bioware forums, but I think they will love the review. They kinda loved the gamecritics 2,5 review and this one sounds a lot better.

You don't even need to ask.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic ... /6753852/1

Well I guess they're not all tards.

Anyway, on topic, wow! I've downloaded a torrent, but after reading that I'm wondering if I should bother playing the game at all. I thought it might not be THAT bad, especially considering VD's initial impressions over at ITS.

Do you really end up losing all your family members no matter what? Bioware games have always been heavily scripted in the story department, but that's a new low.

That bit about Bethany would have severely pissed me off. Do you know what exactly they're going to do with her (imprison her, kill her, etc.)? Do you AT LEAST get the chance to get even with them at a later time?

 

[Haba]

Jesus, everyone liked it. I guess all the true believers are at the "DA2 owners only" forum.