@Xanar: Well, that's a bit short-sighted. It's not because DA:O isn't as good as BG or PS:T, that it isn't a good game in itself. I have played through the game, and I have to say that it really has an interesting and developed story. You just have to be willing to not give in to your prejudices and give it a chance. It's what I did with DA 2 too, but that game just wasn't to my liking.
@Kitteh_On_A_Cloud. It's just my opinion after DAO and DAO2. Some people really liked them and really dislike some of my old favorites. I did not mean to cause offense. Off-topic...love your username. Kittehs have 9 lives, cloud 9, coincidence? Hmm...
@Xanar: No harm done. We all have different tastes. I for one have never played Planescape: Torment, although I'd like to try it out sometime. As for my username, thanks for the compliment. It was inspired by my love for cats (lifelong passion for those curious fluffballs, even though I'm allergic to them) and the fact that I'm a hopeless dreamer. So yeah, a cat floating around on a lil' cloud. I personally thought it was a cute idea.
The Qunari you can play as are Tal-Vashoth. This means you can make your female Qunari a warrior if you so choose (traditionally those women who follow the Qun do not typically fight)
There will be mounts you can ride, but they have no plans for mounted combat.
Morrigan is not a party member but she is also not just a cameo. She will play an active role. Gaider said a lot of our questions after DAO should be answered with regards to Morrigan.
The writing team looked at a lot of history when building Thedas, and drew from a lot of cultures and societies when creating their worlds. For the Qunari they first looked at Muslim society during the Middle Ages with regards to their advancements in technology and medicine among other things, and then branched out from there into other cultures. The art team also has a lot to do with how a group of people will look, and what real world cultural influences will be brought into their society.
We should find out what is going on with Hawke (Dragon Age 2 protagonist) and his/her disappearance
The Player Character, The Inquisitor, does not start out as an inquisitor.
They have other info pertaining to romance which basically comes down to 'love interests will be revealed next year'.
I like the whole taking inspiration from Middle Ages Muslim society thing, it's a setting which really has a lot of untapped potential. Also like the hints at more closure to the first game.
i will wait for the first reviews for sure.. but, à priori, a (huge) 'open world concept' of a skyrim + better/more interesting/dynamical fight engine options.. could be a real good one.. and the real follower of the first DAO (char stories + real lore behind) ; the Morrigan return (the real end of her storyline certainly..at last) ) is conforting me in that opinion.. good move too..) ; maybe, MAYBE, that DA will be really good ... coherence of the story (after the DAO real main storylines) + graphics + char management (if real) + attention to details (money management, etc.. a thing that was truly so-so in the first 2.. if not totally absent in the 2nd^ ).. let's dream.. and wait for the first real reviews, especially from real RPG connoisseurs.. i will see from there.. but it seems they are really taking care of crafting the lore/universe of that one again.. crossing fingers.. and hoping that will not be too hugely console/arcade oriented too (like the 2nd), just for the money market.. well, all things the very first previews/reviews from real RPG connoisseurs will tell us quickly though.. let's hope will be ok.. and that we will be able to enjoy it at the time of the release.. ^ *)
I'm liking what I'm seeing so far for Dragon Age 3. One of the things I like best is the fact that it looks fairly well progressed but the proposed release date is still about a year away. Which should mean enough time to really polish it properly (DA2 suffered a lot from being rushed).
I loved Dragon Age II. I loved Dragon Age II more than any other CRPG I have ever played, and I owned and played Final Fantasy I when it was new, and played Ultima games and Daggerfall and Pools of Radiance and so forth on PC. I've played probably a couple hundred RPGs on more systems than I'd have fingers to count with, and my experience playing Dragon Age II was the very, very best of them all. There's quite a few reasons for this - I won't detail them at this point because I suspect it'd turn the thread into a debate about DAII's virtues that isn't really what the thread is for.
Sometimes it irritates me how much abuse DAII takes, but most of the time, I understand it. Because I didn't like Dragon Age. At all. There were numerous reasons for this, from the combat system I found thoroughly unfun, to my character's inability to have the same opinions about Duncan and the Grey Wardens that I had, to my complete lack of interest in prophecied-to-save-the-world-from-generic-evil plots which were old and cliched when I played one decades ago in Final Fantasy 1, to the overuse of rape-as-pathos in the plot (my first game being a city elf didn't help), to many other things. I'm currently on my fourth try of trying to force my way through that game, which I am doing only to give myself an excuse to play Dragon Age II again.
So why do I understand why people hated it? Because they're very different games, and just as I couldn't care less about Dragon Age and adored Dragon Age II, it only makes sense that other people who loved what Dragon Age brought to the table might care more about what DAII didn't have from DA1, than what it did have on its own. And that's fine. Mostly. Sometime it still leaves me bitter, if only because all the things I loved about DAII are damn near unique for RPGs, and I just wanted my beautiful little game to have a chance and not be drowned out people's desire for yet another goddamn thing where you stab a dragon in the face to save the world like literally hundreds if not thousands of other RPGs.
But it is fine. Really! Not just because my above description is obviously a somewhat simplified caricature of complaints about DAII. I really do intellectually understand why people would dislike it, it's just emotionally that sometimes is more stubborn about the issue.
The funny thing is, why try DAII at all when I cared so little about Dragon Age that I never finished it? Someone gave it to me because they didn't like it. So I gave it a shot one day when I had nothing better to do. In a real sense, if people didn't hate DAII so much, I'd never have tried it. So I suppose I have to be thankful for the negative reaction, in a certain weird way. I bought every DLC, and then bought all the dumb item DLCs I'd normally never touch just as an excuse to give Bioware money for that game. That not being enough, I've bought it for a couple of other people (who were intruiged by my enthusiasm for it) as well.
As for Dragon Age III. Well. I understand Bioware's going to distance itself from the unloved stepchild of the franchise, but that hardly fills me with enthusiasm for the game. I'll still buy it, because there will be some shreds of connection to the game I loved so much, and because there's the off-chance I'll actually enjoy Dragon Age III for what it is instead of lamenting what it is not. And also because Varric's in it, and Varric is totally frigging great.
@Ayiekie, I gave you an "insightful", because, even though I'm still not convinced I would enjoy Dragon Age 2 (I *did* like Dragon Age: Origins, a lot), I think you have created a well-written essay representing a minority opinion, and you are very persuasive and expressive, making your points well.
I would almost try DA2 just to try to see what you see in it. Almost.
I'm still a Bioware fan... kinda, though it's not been easy lately. ME3 really made me rethink buying their games immediately, and I certainly won't preorder anymore.
DA2 didn't live up to DA:O's quality, but I think it rather suffered due to the comparison - had DA:O not existed, DA2 would not have been received nearly as negatively. It does have it's good points, even though the game was clearly rushed. With a few mods, and the DLCs, the game is pretty good. Not great, and definitely flawed, but good.
ME3's ending though... it actually poisoned the whole (otherwise great) series for me. My main complaint with it was that it was genre breaking. The genre of the game was sci-fi, with at least some attempt at plausibility. The ending was pure magic, that belonged to a fantasy game, plus it undermined ME1's plot quite severely. ME1 didn't make sense given the revelations of ME3.
That was such a horrible ball-drop that I resolved, with future Bioware games, to wait a while after release, and see the fan reaction, and then decide whether to buy the game full price, or wait till the price drops.
I will, though, buy DA3, whether soon after the release or later. That, I think, is rather inevitable.
Actually, inspired by this thread, looked into what's going on with DA3 - hadn't really kept up. I have to say that I'm very much liking what I'm seeing thus far. If it manages to fulfill it's promises, it may just be the best Bioware game in a long time. At least that's what I'm hoping for.
I abhorred DA 2. The story is shallow, the dialogue options are dumbed down so that even toddlers can play the game, the fights are way over-the-top (no wonder someone mentioned Final Fantasy...) and the addition of shallow companions (Fenris 'I-hate-mages', that other anime elf Merrill with her dumbness and incredible stupidity, but hey, she's 'kawaaaaiii' and thus many people's new 'waifu', Anders whose personality completely got ruined, Isabela the walking STD, and what not else...) just screamed to me this was a rush job and an obvious attempt at reaching the lowest common denominator, the biggest audience. No, then I prefer a so-called 'generic' fantasy story like Origins, whose story was way more intruiging than Hawke's useless running around in order to gather some gold. Also, some people seem to be satisfied by lazy ass design. Or was that one rehashed and over-used dungeon meant to keep on intruiging me or something? Also, the colours. Everything is BROWN. It was as if my monitor was covered in mud all the time. And the graphics? Horrible. Everything seemed to be glued to the characters, from hair to armours. Also, specific armours for specific characters. Really? I get that it's somehow more 'realistic' (in so far the whole game was trying to be 'realistic'), but still...kind of a nuisance. The enemies were horrible too. No originality at all. The Darkspawn, once real monsters, got turned into brainless clowns. Apparently some people indulge into killing masses and masses and masses of them over and over again...probably including ninja's falling from the sky. Skill and magic trees got butchered to make everything look simpler and more streamlined. It just confused me. What was wrong with Origins' skill and magic trees? Horizontal rows too diffiult for people to understand or what? In any case, waste of time and money, and really a stain on Bioware's already damaged image after the joke which was Mass Effect 3... I really hope DA:I will be more like Origins. At least that was a compelling and intruiging game for me. I can still remember how I felt after discovering how Broodmothers got created, I can still feel that dark atmosphere from the Deep Roads, how the story gradually got grittier and darker in there, I enjoyed the Broken Circle quest most, especially the different 'transformations' you could choose from... I liked the different locations you could travel to, I liked the design and the characters, especially Morrigan, Alistair and Oghren... No emo whining, dumb small girl talk or sexual innuendo banters with them all the time such as the overly simplistic dialogues in DA 2... I could go on and on...
^ Just a formating suggestion. A big, uninterrupted block of text like that is tough to read. Please break long posts up into paragraps, separated by an empty line. Like this:
Skill and magic trees got butchered to make everything look simpler and more streamlined. It just confused me. What was wrong with Origins' skill and magic trees? Horizontal rows too diffiult for people to understand or what?
I've never understood it when people say something to the effect of "DA2's skill trees are dumbed down". No, they aren't. DA1's skill trees were literally skill lines; you can't get any "simpler and streamlined" than that. DA2's actually branched, meaning they are more deserving of the term "skill trees" than DA1's are.
Edit: I'm not trying to say that DA2's skill trees are good or bad, just that complaining about how they were 'dumbed down [compared to DA1]' doesn't make sense.
Looks terrible. They are obviously designing it for consoles too
@2:30, did anyone else say "get over here!" out loud? This video made me want to change my vote. It does sound like they are rehashing other games tactics. The story needs to save it.
I disagree with pretty much everything you said, but it doesn't pick my pocket or punch my nose that you like a game I don't like and dislike a game I liked, so it's cool.
However, it isn't very nice to assume derogatory things about why people liked something you didn't. Really, isn't it enough to just say that you don't like the game and hope the series goes in a different direction? Is it necessary to say that people who did like the game are "the lowest common denominator" and want "waifus", and are satisfied with "lazy-ass design" and so on and so forth?
Do you honestly think that somebody who likes a different piece of art than you like is less intelligent than you and is satisfied with a poorer product? Doesn't that seem kind of silly? Isn't it more likely that they just have different tastes than you? Art is completely 100% inherently subjective.
What you like does not make you a better person than what someone else likes.
It really isn't, you know. I wasn't engaging in hyperbole when I said it was my favourite CRPG ever. It's just that what I look for in a CRPG is probably different than what you do.
I'm sorry, Ayiekie... For most games, I would've agreed with you, but DA2 is pretty much objectively a bad game
There are some things about the game that are objectively bad. For instance, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they liked how often areas were reused.
But no, the game as a whole is not objectively bad.
Probably won't buy it since I haven't played the previous games in the series. I'm planning on buying the first Dragon Age at some point.
I highly recommend doing so. I would say that Dragon Age: Origins is the best game Bioware has made since Baldur's gate 2. The different origin stories depending on the race you pick (and in one origin, there are differences in the origin story based on gender), give it great replay value.
I played, in my first game, a dwarven commoner, and I don't think I've ever been caught up in a story as fast as in that one. It's still my favorite of the origin stories.
Probably won't buy it since I haven't played the previous games in the series. I'm planning on buying the first Dragon Age at some point.
I highly recommend doing so. I would say that Dragon Age: Origins is the best game Bioware has made since Baldur's gate 2. The different origin stories depending on the race you pick (and in one origin, there are differences in the origin story based on gender), give it great replay value.
I played, in my first game, a dwarven commoner, and I don't think I've ever been caught up in a story as fast as in that one. It's still my favorite of the origin stories.
the origins stories were really good. I played the human noble first and most, and that is my absolute favorite. to have everything and see it taken away, then I finally get my revenge in the end and it feels so good for da2 I can only say I played a male rogue because I couldn't bare a second playthrough or the dlc
the origins stories were really good. I played the human noble first and most, and that is my absolute favorite. to have everything and see it taken away, then I finally get my revenge in the end and it feels so good for da2 I can only say I played a male rogue because I couldn't bare a second playthrough or the dlc
Aahh, that euphoria when you finally reach Loghain with the human noble...
Comments
The Qunari you can play as are Tal-Vashoth. This means you can make your female Qunari a warrior if you so choose (traditionally those women who follow the Qun do not typically fight)
There will be mounts you can ride, but they have no plans for mounted combat.
Morrigan is not a party member but she is also not just a cameo. She will play an active role. Gaider said a lot of our questions after DAO should be answered with regards to Morrigan.
The writing team looked at a lot of history when building Thedas, and drew from a lot of cultures and societies when creating their worlds. For the Qunari they first looked at Muslim society during the Middle Ages with regards to their advancements in technology and medicine among other things, and then branched out from there into other cultures. The art team also has a lot to do with how a group of people will look, and what real world cultural influences will be brought into their society.
We should find out what is going on with Hawke (Dragon Age 2 protagonist) and his/her disappearance
The Player Character, The Inquisitor, does not start out as an inquisitor.
They have other info pertaining to romance which basically comes down to 'love interests will be revealed next year'.
I like the whole taking inspiration from Middle Ages Muslim society thing, it's a setting which really has a lot of untapped potential. Also like the hints at more closure to the first game.
Sometimes it irritates me how much abuse DAII takes, but most of the time, I understand it. Because I didn't like Dragon Age. At all. There were numerous reasons for this, from the combat system I found thoroughly unfun, to my character's inability to have the same opinions about Duncan and the Grey Wardens that I had, to my complete lack of interest in prophecied-to-save-the-world-from-generic-evil plots which were old and cliched when I played one decades ago in Final Fantasy 1, to the overuse of rape-as-pathos in the plot (my first game being a city elf didn't help), to many other things. I'm currently on my fourth try of trying to force my way through that game, which I am doing only to give myself an excuse to play Dragon Age II again.
So why do I understand why people hated it? Because they're very different games, and just as I couldn't care less about Dragon Age and adored Dragon Age II, it only makes sense that other people who loved what Dragon Age brought to the table might care more about what DAII didn't have from DA1, than what it did have on its own. And that's fine. Mostly. Sometime it still leaves me bitter, if only because all the things I loved about DAII are damn near unique for RPGs, and I just wanted my beautiful little game to have a chance and not be drowned out people's desire for yet another goddamn thing where you stab a dragon in the face to save the world like literally hundreds if not thousands of other RPGs.
But it is fine. Really! Not just because my above description is obviously a somewhat simplified caricature of complaints about DAII. I really do intellectually understand why people would dislike it, it's just emotionally that sometimes is more stubborn about the issue.
The funny thing is, why try DAII at all when I cared so little about Dragon Age that I never finished it? Someone gave it to me because they didn't like it. So I gave it a shot one day when I had nothing better to do. In a real sense, if people didn't hate DAII so much, I'd never have tried it. So I suppose I have to be thankful for the negative reaction, in a certain weird way. I bought every DLC, and then bought all the dumb item DLCs I'd normally never touch just as an excuse to give Bioware money for that game. That not being enough, I've bought it for a couple of other people (who were intruiged by my enthusiasm for it) as well.
As for Dragon Age III. Well. I understand Bioware's going to distance itself from the unloved stepchild of the franchise, but that hardly fills me with enthusiasm for the game. I'll still buy it, because there will be some shreds of connection to the game I loved so much, and because there's the off-chance I'll actually enjoy Dragon Age III for what it is instead of lamenting what it is not. And also because Varric's in it, and Varric is totally frigging great.
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/20903/say-the-opposite-of-what-you-mean#latest
I would almost try DA2 just to try to see what you see in it. Almost.
DA2 didn't live up to DA:O's quality, but I think it rather suffered due to the comparison - had DA:O not existed, DA2 would not have been received nearly as negatively. It does have it's good points, even though the game was clearly rushed. With a few mods, and the DLCs, the game is pretty good. Not great, and definitely flawed, but good.
ME3's ending though... it actually poisoned the whole (otherwise great) series for me. My main complaint with it was that it was genre breaking. The genre of the game was sci-fi, with at least some attempt at plausibility. The ending was pure magic, that belonged to a fantasy game, plus it undermined ME1's plot quite severely. ME1 didn't make sense given the revelations of ME3.
That was such a horrible ball-drop that I resolved, with future Bioware games, to wait a while after release, and see the fan reaction, and then decide whether to buy the game full price, or wait till the price drops.
I will, though, buy DA3, whether soon after the release or later. That, I think, is rather inevitable.
Makes it a lot easier to read.
Edit: I'm not trying to say that DA2's skill trees are good or bad, just that complaining about how they were 'dumbed down [compared to DA1]' doesn't make sense.
This video made me want to change my vote. It does sound like they are rehashing other games tactics. The story needs to save it.
However, it isn't very nice to assume derogatory things about why people liked something you didn't. Really, isn't it enough to just say that you don't like the game and hope the series goes in a different direction? Is it necessary to say that people who did like the game are "the lowest common denominator" and want "waifus", and are satisfied with "lazy-ass design" and so on and so forth?
Do you honestly think that somebody who likes a different piece of art than you like is less intelligent than you and is satisfied with a poorer product? Doesn't that seem kind of silly? Isn't it more likely that they just have different tastes than you? Art is completely 100% inherently subjective.
What you like does not make you a better person than what someone else likes.
But no, the game as a whole is not objectively bad.
I played, in my first game, a dwarven commoner, and I don't think I've ever been caught up in a story as fast as in that one. It's still my favorite of the origin stories.
for da2 I can only say I played a male rogue because I couldn't bare a second playthrough or the dlc
They should pay me if they want me to play that abomination.