Review Vault Dweller Does Dragon Age II

[Radisshu]

There's a typo in the beginning of the article: Urguhart should be Urquhart.

 

[Antihero]

Don't know if this has been brought up, but here's some supposedly translated interview from their lead level designer. [Drama Mask] VD, I think you owe these people a public retraction. They just needed to fine tune the spawning breeding mechanic. Not that a wave must always be a bad thing, like a memorable ambush, but not as a "mechanic" for most encounters in an RPG.

Q: Does every battle consist of enemy waves? What is your answer for all those people that claim the lack of ability to know the number of waves and where they will pop up causes a battle that consists of reactions instead of tactics and planning?

A: Part of the tactical game is adapting to changes. The waves might feel different, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. I do not agree with those that think the wave pattern is terrible as of itself, but I do agree that there are things it's possible to do in order to improve the use of the waves. We can use them less often and improve the breeding mechanic, for instance. All in all I think the waves are an excellent addition to the game.

Q: Blood Magic is a forbidden art in the world of DA2, but the main character uses it freely during the game against civilians and Templars. How is that logical?

A: Well, sometimes you have to give up perfect inner logic to make the game more fun. This is one of these cases. Anyway, this can be explained by the fact that the champion is someone who can do whatever he wants. No one is bold enough to lecture him about that. This is kind of like when the authorities ignore certain crimes because the criminal's aid is of great importance.

 

[Mister Arkham]

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

Oh, so I guess that makes it a company mandate, then.

Excellent review VD. The further I get from that horrible hour I spent with the demo, the happier I am that I didn't want to buy the whole thing--and you're not changing my mind at all. (in an awesome, well-balanced way)

 

[Fowyr]

Good review.

 

[made]

And in Conclusion Dragon Age 2 is a mediocre and deeply flawed action RPG

Boring. His Holiness is old and lost his zeal.

If DA2 is mediocre, what's a truly terrible arpg like?

Lionheart? Dungeon Siege? Harbinger? Space Siege? Dungeon Lords? Mage Knight: Apocalypse?

I see. Those must be some immensely shitty games - or just crash on start-up. Maybe you subscribe to the school of thought that argues any game deserves at least a 5/10 simply if it runs at all.

It's the same issue I had with your FNV review: the conclusion doesn't follow from the preceding analysis. In this case it's even more extreme: you imply that combat sucks, loot sucks, story sucks, exploration sucks, various mechanics suck. Well, what's left? Shouldn't there be some redeeming features? I don't think you mention even one aspect of the game you actually like. Oh right, the setting has "potential" - is that enough to call it mediocre overall?

 

[Trash]

EA does what EA does. Buy a solid studio. Milk it and its IC dry untill it can give no more. Close the studio. Rince and repeat. Bye Bioware. Was nice knowing ya.

Anyone still having hope for MEIII?

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

Good review as usual. Having read it, I feel I can safely continue to ignore DA2's very existence.

 

[Lesifoere]

Somewhere between sitting and watching my characters slowly – ever so very slowly – chipping away at the dragon’s health bar and keeping an eye on the cool down counters, I asked myself what part of this tedious exercise constitutes fun and couldn’t really come up with a good answer.

VD played this so we wouldn't have to. Truly he has suffered for the Codex's sins.

 

[Excommunicator]

This review makes DA2 sound like a really poor game. Fortunately I had no interest in playing it to begin with.

Too bad metacritic wouldn't take the Codex seriously enough to list it though.

 

[asper]

Ironically, given it's focus

 

[Devil]

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

Can one of you guys be BRO and post in that thread that about VD being an indie dev and AoD. If AoD ever comes out it should earn him a couple of more $. Time to start marketing, yo.

 

[Esquilax]

Can one of you guys be BRO and post in that thread that about VD being an indie dev and AoD. If AoD ever comes out it should earn him a couple of more $. Time to start marketing, yo.

That's a great idea. No, this is not sarcasm btw - everyone knows that sarcasm doesn't translate well in text. Haha.

 

[attackfighter]

Anyone still having hope for MEIII?

I do.

Bioware is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in that their Mass Effect team is decent where as their Dragon Age team is full of psychotic retards such as Stan Woo and Chris priestly.

I suppose the sole reason for the DA dev team was to purge the undesirables from their ranks and keep them confined away from society.

 

[Devil]

Can one of you guys be BRO and post in that thread that about VD being an indie dev and AoD. If AoD ever comes out it should earn him a couple of more $. Time to start marketing, yo.

That's a great idea. No, this is not sarcasm btw - everyone knows that sarcasm doesn't translate well in text. Haha.

Shut up or it's eternal damnation for you, mate.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

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?

With hindsight this is what happened: after formatting the review I approved it. The review appeared on the frontpage in the content-section, the comments thread appeared in the news and content forum but the newspost itself didn't appear on the frontpage. That's why I made a second newspost manually which was then deleted by Jason. So the problem is, while content and comments thread appear normally, the newspost itself doesn't appear on the frontpage (but it must be in created in the DB I'd wager since the *Latest News* section displays it).

 

[janjetina]

how do you feel about the way the dialogue wheel came together and how it made things a little more clear and direct?

Please light a match.

It lets us hold more conversation options than we had available in Origins where we had a cap of six. We technically have a cap of 10, so you can get a nice, cleaner interface to ask questions for clarification.

This is worse than Gaider's exponential complexity. He is saying that it's the retardo wheel that holds conversation options, and not the underlying array of strings or whichever data structures he is using. You have to be a complete dumbfuck that is unable to distinguish from high level interface and low level implementation. What he is really saying is that they used a statically allocated array with 6 elements in DA and statically allocated array with 10 elements in DA 2. Now this is a pinnacle of retardo level software design and programming.

As for the rest, it's the old ''reading is hard, books are obsolete and education is for losers" argument. What is his level of education anyway?

 

[J_C]

The Biowhores....liked the review? How is this possible? There is hope after all! Eh, not a chance, Bioware will just disregard anything negative the critics have said, and make DA3 even more welcoming.

 

[Gord]

Q: Blood Magic is a forbidden art in the world of DA2, but the main character uses it freely during the game against civilians and Templars. How is that logical?

A: Well, sometimes you have to give up perfect inner logic to make the game more fun. This is one of these cases. Anyway, this can be explained by the fact that the champion is someone who can do whatever he wants. No one is bold enough to lecture him about that. This is kind of like when the authorities ignore certain crimes because the criminal's aid is of great importance.

 

[circ]

Well that cleared it up perfectly.

It's like those tv-shows where serial rapists get off from the prosecutor and detectives because he's a government contractor.

Except a blood mage is probably closer to Hitler walking around according to BioWare writers. Pretty sure Hitler is exempt from prosecution immunity.

 

[Pegultagol]

Somewhere between sitting and watching my characters slowly – ever so very slowly – chipping away at the dragon’s health bar and keeping an eye on the cool down counters, I asked myself what part of this tedious exercise constitutes fun and couldn’t really come up with a good answer.

VD played this so we wouldn't have to. Truly he has suffered for the Codex's sins.

Well, I did the high dragon battle and it was one of the few bright spots in the game in my opinion, after suffering through a deluge of filler mobs to be honest. The thing that really bothered me was that there is no save function so if you do not manage to make it through the battle, you have to go through the whole slog again from the beginning. And what further exacerbates this is that there is no evidence whatsoever of the nature of the impending fight; it is as if the developers just put the high level creature without any consideration for the player's level of preparedness and it was a big surprise when it actually triggered. Here the filler mobs actually serve their purpose of helping replenish some health and stamina potions...there are such encounters that really test your mettle even on normal difficulty but they seem to be hidden or triggered only when you decide to explore the horrid environment.

I agree mostly with the review, and it is well written. However, it seems in trying to explain the mechanics underlying this trainwreck, necessary plot points had to be divulged somewhat. It is a review that informs a lot that is wrong with the game but also serves to commiserate with others who had already gone through it enough to understand its gameplay and are seeking some measure of consensus or even closure with their personal beliefs regarding the game. VD put the words out of my mouth, couldn't have put it to writing better.

 

[Johannes]

Q: Blood Magic is a forbidden art in the world of DA2, but the main character uses it freely during the game against civilians and Templars. How is that logical?

A: Well, sometimes you have to give up perfect inner logic to make the game more fun. This is one of these cases. Anyway, this can be explained by the fact that the champion is someone who can do whatever he wants. No one is bold enough to lecture him about that. This is kind of like when the authorities ignore certain crimes because the criminal's aid is of great importance.

"Don't mess with that dude, he presses a button and something awesome happens."

 

[Deleted member 7219]

A well-reasoned and thought out review VD, as I have come to expect from you. I really hope some of the lead designers of this game happen to read it.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Anyone still having hope for MEIII?

I do.

Bioware is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in that their Mass Effect team is decent where as their Dragon Age team is full of psychotic retards such as Stan Woo and Chris priestly.

I suppose the sole reason for the DA dev team was to purge the undesirables from their ranks and keep them confined away from society.

Stan Woo and Chris Priestly are QA people, they aren't developers. But the DA team does have David Gaider, who wrote this mess, so I still take your point.

As you say, ME is made by a different team so DA2 is not indicative of the quality of ME3.

 

[the_unshaved_masses]

QA=quality assurance

Where was the quality in Daatoo?

 

[Deleted member 7219]

QA=quality assurance

Where was the quality in Daatoo?

Woo and Priestly are more like community people.