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Thread: Dragon Age
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2012-11-06, 11:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Before we continue I should make something clear: My perspective on DAO is very different from that of most players for two reasons:
1. I played DAO totally blind, going in knowing absolutely nothing about it. This doesn't sound like such a big deal but when I read pre-release material on the game it feels like it's describing a completely different game entirely. Many of the complaints leveled at DAO (not necessarily yours) seem to stem from mismatched expectations.
For example, I'd have never called DAO "dark" in a million years until I saw this was how Bioware themselves referred to their own project, and I never really felt like it was merely trying to be dark but failing. It felt, as I was playing it, like it was trying to be a silly adventure story that takes a few stabs at de- and re- constructing its own genre along the way. This is why I find things like, say, the Mage-Templar thing to be effective rather than simply juvenile. The situation isn't complex because mages turn into abominations, it's interesting because Knight Commander Gregoir is a perfectly reasonable human being who 100% believes that what the templars do is right. That fact alone speaks volumes about the real sociopolitical issues at work in the setting than any amount of "BWAR HAR HAR DEMONIC POSSESSION AND RAPE IT'S ALL SO DARK OOOOOOH!!!" could ever accomplish. This, by the way, is why Dragon Age 2 ruined the whole damned thing.
2. Most of my interest in the setting (and thus, the Interesting Bits you're shuffled along to on your quest to destroySauronUrthemiel) comes from subtext rather than the things that are explicitly said; Subtext the authors may have never intended. To be honest, Thedas in my head is probably much cooler and more interesting than the "canon" of the official conception in the heads of the folks at Bioware. I don't really think this is a problem: Death of the author and all that, and it's a sign of the quality of the work that it was able to provide this subtext at all. Besides, puzzling out the mysteries for yourself is fun! Much more fun than sitting down and being told things. However, not everyone feels the same way as I do about subtext being able to provide a replacement for concrete lore and dialogue writing, and even those who do may find subtext entirely different from mine, due to how these things are necessarily dependent on personal interpretation.
In short, if aren't the kind of gamer who likes to sit up half the night wondering about what the Black City really is, we're not going to see eye to eye on this, and that's that.
SpoilerHint: The Chantry's account is demonstrably proven false in a DA2 DLC.
I was referring more to the whole Men/Elves/Dwarves/OrcsDarkspawn thing (which to be honest is more accurately a satire of cheap Tolkien ripoffs moreso than Tolkien himself), and it should also be noted by "satire" I meant the non-comedic type. Did you ever go to Orzammar?
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2012-11-07, 03:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Of course the major criticism against DA2 is that it DIDN't incorporate these things. The reason for DA:O success was that it promised to be the spiritual successor of the Baldur's Gate games, something it also delivered on. To say that DA:O suffered from being like an old fashioned game is like saying that XCOM: Enemy Unknown suffers from being turn-based.
In fact I dare say that this is why the sales of DA2 plumeted and never recovered after all the prebooked and early hype games were delivered (if you compare the sales curves between the two games it is clear that DA:O sold mainly because of word of mouth, while DA2 hit rock bottom two weeks after launch and only sold as much as it did due to pre-orders from DA:O fans).Blizzard Battletag: UnderDog#21677
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2012-11-07, 03:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
A father taken by time, a brother dead by my own hand.
With this work behold my grief, in Stone and shifting sand.
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2012-11-07, 08:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
I wouldn't have minded the story. It was nothing new, but it was told competently. It was the combat that was so dull that I just couldn't go on.
Resident Vancian Apologist
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2012-11-07, 09:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
There's a mod that speeds up combat in DA:O. It basically increases the speed of every weapon by a large margin. I ran an entire playthrough using it and it was interesting. Combat was quicker and more dynamic. I can't say I didn't have any doubts about balance, though - it seemed as though enemies using "natural" weapons like dragons and ogres were less challenging. But maybe it was just because I'd beaten the game before and knew that I was doing. It certainly gave warriors and rogues an advantage over mages, but that's a good thing.
As for the story:
SpoilerCorypheus does put some things into question. On the one hand, it means the Chant of Light is partially true - the Magisters did step into the Golden City and the Old Gods convinced them to do it. On the other hand, the City was already black when they got there...
All in all, I'd enjoy DA2 a lot more than DA:O, if it had been handled better. I enjoyed the structure of the story, and there was actually some moral ambiguity to the central conflict, something I would never have expected from BioWare. But it all lacked polish. So the games are mostly tied for me. While I enjoy Baldur's Gate immensely, I really don't think modern games should imitate it.Last edited by Morty; 2012-11-07 at 09:08 AM.
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2012-11-07, 09:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-07, 09:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
And when you think about it, Torment was similar to "modern" (using that term veeery losely) RPGs in one way - it presented us with a defined protagonist. Well, alright, he was a complete blank slate but nonetheless he was clearly defined as such - an amnesiac male human covered in scars who woke up on a slab in the Mortuary.
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2012-11-07, 10:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
I don't see how that's possible. DA2's combat system is just DA:O's sped up and with a rebalanced talent/spell system, plus a couple of odd additions (cross-class combos) and subtractions (spell combinations). The base mechanics are the same, the real-time-with-pause type of system seen in KotOR but without turns running in the background.
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"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2012-11-07, 12:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Why is it that you think the things DAO suffered from and the things that people (or you?) felt were missing in DA2 are one and the same? These were not the only things that were changed, after all.
DAO's issues was not that it was old fashioned (it was in fact not), but that certain systems fit very poorly to the game they had made. The skill system for example; the idea of a skill system is not bad, but DAO's skills were rather poorly fitted into the system. It actually held you back if you wished to invest in things other than combat (which is like 90 % of the gamecontent). It provides you with plenty of options, but has a skill that is required to invest in higher ability levels. This could have been a very interesting balancing mechanic... had most of the skills been useful outside of a few select moments/tasks.
Wether it was right to completely remove the skills rather than improve them in DA2 is a discussion that is best left for another topic. But, to me anyways, the skills in DAO came across of having been added for the sake of having skills. Not them actually adding benefit to the game as such. Which is what I meant with artifacts of older games.
Using old mechanics is fine (I wouldn't ask them to get rid of hit points for example, even if I personally don't like hit points as a system much) as long as it makes the game better. Otherwise it will detract from the experience (but that might be tolerable if the rest of the game is enjoyable).
I hope that clarifies might statement somewhat.
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2012-11-07, 01:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Haven't played DA2, but I did run through DA:O. It was okay. I found the soundtrack interminably boring so I had to swap it out for my own, (A mixture of Diablo music, Hellraiser themes and other atmospheric stuff). Helped a lot.
Also Mages were hilariously overpowered. Running through as a really short elven Richard O'Brian mage through the game certainly made the often cringeworthy romance interludes more hilarious.
But mostly my over-riding memories of the game can be summed up in my two unnofficial tag lines for the game.
Dragon Age Origins: And I for one will not explain it to you.
Dragon Age Origins: And then you are covered in blood.
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2012-11-07, 03:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
I must say I was slightly disappointed in the speed too. It was a little too fast in DA:O compared to Baldur's Gate. Plus, much fewer options for setting autopausing.
On paper, maybe. But the FEELING was completely different. Especially the higher speed, the much worse camera (no overhead view) and the hillarious overkill violence (cutting a grown man in half using DAGGERS???). But even without those specific things, as I said, the feeling of the gameplay is just... off.
Regarding skills: I don't feel there is anythingwrong with the skills in DA:O. They are no more combat oriented than in BG1 or 2.Last edited by Avilan the Grey; 2012-11-07 at 03:47 PM.
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Shepard: "Wrex! Do we have mawsign?"
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2012-11-07, 04:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
To be fair... that was actually a bug.
Re: skills: Oh they were certainly not. Except combat training... which sits there as a point sink you have to spend your skill points in as a warrior or rogue if you wish to pick higher tiered abilities.
So you have to take the skills -at the expense- of combat ability. Which would be fine if the rest of the game mechanics took that into account. But they do not.Last edited by Aux-Ash; 2012-11-07 at 04:28 PM.
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2012-11-07, 05:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Which are all completely aesthetic things, not mechanical ones, which are what the post you were originally responding to was talking about.
And personally, I didn't think it "felt" any different, aside from faster, which was an improvement in my book.
The overkill violence is silly and distracting, I agree with you there. But Origins has a lot of that as well, with the buckets of blood you can get smeared all over you. That's just something they went with for the series as a whole for some reason.
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"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2012-11-08, 02:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
People often refer to enemies exploding when hit by a dagger, but I hardly ever see it on Normal or above difficulty. Once in a blue moon, when some low-HP schlub has been hit by a particularly effective cross-class combo, I will see his body parts fly in multiple directions. But beyond that, the only time enemies explode with any degree of reliability is during the exaggerated bits, like when Varric does his Tony Montana impression.
Last edited by Giggling Ghast; 2012-11-08 at 02:26 AM.
A father taken by time, a brother dead by my own hand.
With this work behold my grief, in Stone and shifting sand.
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2012-11-08, 10:06 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
But the problem is that there's a noticeable dearth of Interesting Things. Leaving aside that Thedas is one of the most derivative, uninteresting settings I've seen in a fantasy game, (something which the art design does nothing to alleviate, by the way) the fact of the matter is that the central conflict of the story undermines any real investment to the game world. All the places you go to are just boxes you have to check on a to-do list to stop the Darkspawn and in almost all of them (or just all of them if you're a human noble or dalish elf) the player is the outsider who has to go in and fix everyone else's problems. If you didn't play as a dwarf you won't exactly find yourself being particularly bothered about who succeeds the dwarven throne because all that matters to you is that somebody does and note that we're talking about one of the few instances where the game isn't just going for a straight 'good or evil/bad' choice.
The fact that the outcomes of these choices can so dramatically effect the game world just makes things even worse. There's no sense of permanence or persistence to these conflicts because you fix most of them, usually within a few hours of having been introduced to them. It just demonstrates that Ferelden pretty much revolves around whatever the Warden decides and that gives the impression that you aren't exploring a world, you're just cleaning up someone else's mess.
Think of it like The Odyssey, or Alice in Wonderland, or The Wizard of Oz: The plot in all three of these is simply that the main characters want to go home, but keep getting caught into obstacles that prevent them from doing so. It's not the process of overcoming these obstacles that makes these stories interesting, but rather what the obstacles themselves have to show us.
Personally though, the world of Thedas was enough to keep me playing. There's plenty of interesting stuff there beneath the obvious Tolkien influences (which, really, are mostly satirical) if you take out the time to look.
Also, one other point: this 'non-comedic satire' thing. I'm not entirely sure how you draw the distinction between that and just playing it straight and I'd be interested in seeing where you draw the distinction here.
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2012-11-08, 10:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Hm. That just makes me think how much I would love a real "Roadtrip RPG". No main quest, just a gigantic map full of Interesting Things (tm), short quests and interesting NPCs.
Resident Vancian Apologist
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2012-11-08, 10:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Legend of Mana on the PS1 kind of had a similar thing going. It was in many ways a very strange game, but essentially it was entirely made of up sidequests and random interludes concerning the people you met as you uh, put the world back together. Some of the quests chained together into several larger narratives and there was a final boss of sorts too, but it was otherwise refreshingly free of main-quest-narrative stuff.
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2012-11-08, 12:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Drakensang: The River of Time has a main quest, but it's essentially a roadtrip. Well, river trip really. It mostly is an excuse to go interesting places and do stuff. Since the main quest is considerably lower key that saving the whole world everywhere it gives the game a very different feel.
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2012-11-08, 12:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
That... could actually work. Heck, if you were willing to hybridise genres a bit there's a good potential for a sci-fi game with elements of the old 'space trade sim' genre (that doesn't get enough presence these days). Or just actual boats if you wanted a more fantasy approach, you don't see many oceanic settings after all.
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2012-11-09, 12:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Which now just sounds like an excuse for an Earthsea game.
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2012-11-09, 01:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Almost everything original or unique about Dragon Age comes from Jade Empire.
Still, I like the games. Combat is fun in both if a bit repetitive.Avatar Credit: the very talented PseudoStraw. Full image:Spoiler
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2012-11-09, 02:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Last edited by Zevox; 2012-11-09 at 03:07 AM.
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"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2012-11-09, 03:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Avatar Credit: the very talented PseudoStraw. Full image:Spoiler
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2012-11-09, 04:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-09, 05:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
*shrugs* When both games are made by the same company it's hard not to draw comparisons. And while yes, protagonists being the last of an ancient order is a done to death trope, golems (being powered by transplanted souls) and demons as corrupted spirits are less so. Especially when there's Wild Flower with her whole possession thing going on pretty closely matching Wynne and Anders. Yes, none of these are exactly the same in either form, but I think it's fair to say Bioware wasn't done telling these stories.
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2012-11-09, 05:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
The Warden wasn't the last of his/her Order; Alistair was also a Warden. And there were Grey Wardens in other countries.
Last edited by Giggling Ghast; 2012-11-09 at 05:54 PM.
A father taken by time, a brother dead by my own hand.
With this work behold my grief, in Stone and shifting sand.
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2012-11-09, 06:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
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2012-11-09, 06:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-09, 10:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Dragon Age
Neither game has that. The closest that anything comes to that description is Justice becoming warped by merging with Anders in DA2. In both cases otherwise there's a difference between good spirits and demons. Which is a very generic fantasy thing.
The Golems in Dragon Age play a minor role in the backstory of the problems of Orzamar. Their method of creation may bear some resemblance (though not a perfect one) to those in Jade Empire, but the role and importance of them in each game is quite different.
Which is another typical fantasy thing.
Also, I was going to point out the thing about the Warden not being the last anything, but I see Candle Jack has done it for me.
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"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2012-11-10, 07:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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