Dragon Age: Origins?

[Morty]

Well here's the thing. ME3 will keep being brought up about it, because it is the point where the emphasis on the multiplayer is most blatantly obvious on how it effected the production of the game. I may have my suspicions that the pointless grind, lackluster questlines, and time filling collectibles of DA:I were implemented to pad out the run time and make the game seem to be in the same style as Origin, while putting more resources into the multiplayer. But I have no proof. Theoretically anyway. It's pretty obvious to say "Game makers have this amount of money, what percentage was put into the main game and what into the multiplayer" and then compare to the total and percentage put in a game with 0 multiplayer. But I don't have those numbers.

Relevant as it may be, I'm doubtful anything can be said about it that hasn't been said over seven years and thousands of words expended on the subject.

[Dienekes]

Relevant as it may be, I'm doubtful anything can be said about it that hasn't been said over seven years and thousands of words expended on the subject.

That’s fair.

I suppose we could start talking about the Mage/Templar problem instead. There’s got to be ground we haven’t yet covered on that topic, right?

[Morty]

That’s fair.

I suppose we could start talking about the Mage/Templar problem instead. There’s got to be ground we haven’t yet covered on that topic, right?

If not there, then I'm sure arguing whether the combat mechanics are best in Origins or DA2 will bring something new to the table.

[Inarius]

Well here's the thing. ME3 will keep being brought up about it, because it is the point where the emphasis on the multiplayer is most blatantly obvious on how it effected the production of the game. I may have my suspicions that the pointless grind, lackluster questlines, and time filling collectibles of DA:I were implemented to pad out the run time and make the game seem to be in the same style as Origin, while putting more resources into the multiplayer. But I have no proof. Theoretically anyway. It's pretty obvious to say "Game makers have this amount of money, what percentage was put into the main game and what into the multiplayer" and then compare to the total and percentage put in a game with 0 multiplayer. But I don't have those numbers.

The multiplayer doesn't really have much to do with how ME3 turned out, it was handled by the montreal studio using a proptype for a first person mass effect multiplayer game that hadnt worked out. The main issue with ME3 and DA2 turning out the way they did was EA pressuring Bioware to churn out games at an accelerated pace due to delays and unmet expectations with SWToR. Those were the first two games released with a dev cycle when fully under the EA umbrella and they wanted a launch pace that Bioware couldn't meet, additional money wouldn't of helped with the time schedule they were on.

As far as the topic of playing a rogue in DAO I can say this, pump cunning with a melee build and a lot of the requirements get easier. On top of that You really dont need the active talents from the dual wield tree because they actively reduce your overall damage since they dont trigger backstabs so you'll have a lot of talent points to put into stuff like lockpicking if you need a bump early in the game. I wouldn't invest more than 1 or 2 points though.

[halfeye]

How are you supposed to get past Javia (spelt?)?

I had four party members at more or less full health, and one second later one of them is dead. I don't understand it at all, there's no game in that.

[Morty]

Origins has those "oops, now you're dead" moments. I think that when in doubt, bringing two mages and CCing everything into oblivion is the answer.

[Keltest]

Origins has those "oops, now you're dead" moments. I think that when in doubt, bringing two mages and CCing everything into oblivion is the answer.

Also, what level are you? While Origins does have some level scaling, there is an upper and lower range for how far it will scale, and Orzammar in general is one of the highest level zones, intended to be dealt with last out of all the treaties.

[Morty]

I've done it as second to last on some playthroughs, but you definitely want to do at least two others before that. There's two fights before the gates to the city that are the game's way of telling you that you're not quite ready.

[warty goblin]

None of these were actually Anthem's problem - the biggest problem by far was the loot. And for a looter-shooter that's pretty damning, but it is fixable.

The other problems were the bugs (fixable) and the staleness of the content - the latter of which needs time that the devs didn't have because they were caught up with the first two.

The core combat is amazing - it's by far the best Iron Man fantasy we've ever gotten in a game - and the story, while meh, is no worse than the likes of Destiny or Division. About the only looter shooter that bothers with story is Warframe anyway.

I have no objection to bad stories in games. I really dislike having my face rubbed in bad stories in games for extended periods of time. I've not played Anthem, but it certainly sounded like they make you spend a lot of time on the story, which makes it vastly more painful than the complete nothingburger of, say, Division 2. Andromeda definitely made this mistake, repeatedly shoving these laughably badly written paint-by-numbers scenes at me that just went on and on and these stupid people are still talking. Something like Ghost Recon Wildlands also has a terrible plot, stupid one-dimensional characters and terrible writing, but forces you to spend about 35 seconds per hour of gameplay actually interacting with these things, so they really don't matter.

Ahh so Div2's multiplayer is actually worse than I thought. Slightly disappointing, but still, I'll never interact with it and it still seems like the least amount of resources were put into the system.

Div 2's multiplayer is great. It absolutely nails the feel of running around in a fantasy adventure with your buddy, where everybody's free to play basically however they want. Nobody's subordinate, so you don't have to wait around for somebody else to finish a dialog very often at all - and when you are, it's because there's a specific story beat you can interact with. There's definitely some rough edges, but it works extremely well, and offers a genuinely good time and a feeling that's really quite distinct.

[Giggling Ghast]

How are you supposed to get past Javia (spelt?)?

I had four party members at more or less full health, and one second later one of them is dead. I don't understand it at all, there's no game in that.

I don’t recall Jarvia being that difficult. Do you have at least one rogue in the party to deal with the trip lines? My MC was a rogue, so I could always catch those.

The Wiki has some tips, incidentally:

https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Jarvia_(strategy)

[Cespenar]

Origins has those "oops, now you're dead" moments. I think that when in doubt, bringing two mages and CCing everything into oblivion is the answer.

Definitely this. DAO is pretty close to the BG2 type of rpgs, which means CC is usually the way to go.

I was actually walking around with 3 mages, if you can believe that. (Arcane Warrior, Morrigan, Wynn)

[Morty]

I don’t recall Jarvia being that difficult. Do you have at least one rogue in the party to deal with the trip lines?

The Wiki has some tips, incidentally:

https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Jarvia_(strategy)

Now that I think about it, I remember those traps messing up my party years ago. So maybe that's it.

Definitely this. DAO is pretty close to the BG2 type of rpgs, which means CC is usually the way to go.

I was actually walking around with 3 mages, if you can believe that. (Arcane Warrior, Morrigan, Wynn)

I absolutely can, since that was one of the best ways to play (if not the best).

[halfeye]

Origins has those "oops, now you're dead" moments. I think that when in doubt, bringing two mages and CCing everything into oblivion is the answer.

CCing? I have the three wizards (levels 16, 16 and 15) and Alistair (level 15).

[Dienekes]

CCing? I have the three wizards (levels 16, 16 and 15) and Alistair (level 15).

Crowd control. Making it so the opponent can't do anything.

It's been awhile since i played DA:O but I remember Cone of Cold, Crushing Prison, and Mass Paralysis being good for that sort of thing. And with 3 wizards, honestly you can just about Storm of the Century everyone whenever you feel like it.

[Inarius]

I have no objection to bad stories in games. I really dislike having my face rubbed in bad stories in games for extended periods of time. I've not played Anthem, but it certainly sounded like they make you spend a lot of time on the story, which makes it vastly more painful than the complete nothingburger of, say, Division 2. Andromeda definitely made this mistake, repeatedly shoving these laughably badly written paint-by-numbers scenes at me that just went on and on and these stupid people are still talking. Something like Ghost Recon Wildlands also has a terrible plot, stupid one-dimensional characters and terrible writing, but forces you to spend about 35 seconds per hour of gameplay actually interacting with these things, so they really don't matter. .

Anthem doesn't really make you spend much time on story. Nearly all of it is optional and the optional stuff is actually fairly good. As for the stuff that ism't optional the spacebar does wonders and lets you skip huge chunks of the story. The real issue I had with it was it just didn't provide a good enough drive to keep me coming back day after day.

As for Andromeda I'd say the biggest issue I had with it were the companions. They were either stupidly annoying, rehashes of prior characters, or just utterly forgettable. The main story itself I didn't have a huge problem with personally. I felt it was better than NWN 1 at least (which isn't saying much), but I think people just tend to overrate Biowares older main storylines. Usually its the companions Bioware writes that draw me in to a Bioware game but for Andromeda I just literally didn't care to bring any of them along and that drained a huge chunk of my enjoyment from the game. I still think it has some of Biowares best gameplay, but if I just want a game with great gameplay I can get that pretty much anywhere and in smaller more bite sized chunks.

[factotum]

I think people just tend to overrate Biowares older main storylines.

Have you ever played Jade Empire? Because IMHO that is probably the best main storyline Bioware has ever done, with a twist that you will likely genuinely not see coming.

[Inarius]

Have you ever played Jade Empire? Because IMHO that is probably the best main storyline Bioware has ever done, with a twist that you will likely genuinely not see coming.

That would be the one standout main storyline of Biowares from my perspective. They took their standard heros journey they usually use and added twists to it which I loved. I mean they have other games I loved but that was largely on the backs of the great companions those games had.

[halfeye]

Crowd control. Making it so the opponent can't do anything.

It's been awhile since i played DA:O but I remember Cone of Cold, Crushing Prison, and Mass Paralysis being good for that sort of thing. And with 3 wizards, honestly you can just about Storm of the Century everyone whenever you feel like it.

Oops, noticed that it's levels of 15, 14, 14 and 14, Wynn did level up to 15 but I went back to before and she didn't level again.

Hm, two have cone of cold, and I don't have the others at all (seemed too dark side). I might return to another previous save (or start again from scratch). I'm okay on the minions mostly, but when Jarvia show up, she just kills my team in what seem to be one-shots from what seems to be at least half health, I think someone on the design team made a mistake with her. It doesn't help that it takes a second or to to drink a poltice (drink a poltice? they shouldn't be doing that anyway, but it's what they do).

[Inarius]

Oops, noticed that it's levels of 15, 14, 14 and 14, Wynn did level up to 15 but I went back to before and she didn't level again.

Hm, two have cone of cold, and I don't have the others at all (seemed too dark side). I might return to another previous save (or start again from scratch). I'm okay on the minions mostly, but when Jarvia show up, she just kills my team in what seem to be one-shots from what seems to be at least half health, I think someone on the design team made a mistake with her. It doesn't help that it takes a second or to to drink a poltice (drink a poltice? they shouldn't be doing that anyway, but it's what they do).

Fireball also has a CC component to it and you can try glyph of paralysis or glyph of repulsion if you have them as well. On top of that comboing them creates a huge aoe paralysis spell though you can hit your party members with that so caution is warranted. As for Jarvia herself, she does so much damage because shes a rogue and rogue bosses can pretty much one shot anyone they hit who isn't a tank. She hits hard but she isn't that bad really if you can lock her down with CC or get Alistair or your arcane warrior right in her face to keep her occupied.

[warty goblin]

As for Andromeda I'd say the biggest issue I had with it were the companions. They were either stupidly annoying, rehashes of prior characters, or just utterly forgettable. The main story itself I didn't have a huge problem with personally. I felt it was better than NWN 1 at least (which isn't saying much), but I think people just tend to overrate Biowares older main storylines. Usually its the companions Bioware writes that draw me in to a Bioware game but for Andromeda I just literally didn't care to bring any of them along and that drained a huge chunk of my enjoyment from the game. I still think it has some of Biowares best gameplay, but if I just want a game with great gameplay I can get that pretty much anywhere and in smaller more bite sized chunks.

I pretty quickly soured on any parts of Andromeda where anybody was opening their mouths. The narrative didn't really hang together and completely failed to motivate me, and pretty much everybody was horribly written. Worse, the gameplay and story really didn't mesh up well at all. I spent all this time running around on a planet raising a meter, and when it was full enough a colony instantly appeared and... pretty much nothing else changed. If the plot revolves around terraforming space magic, I expect to see some impressive terraforming space magic. When I wasn't engaged in meter-raising I was harvesting raw materials, but these were only good for crafting better versions of the same damn guns so I could keep up with the power curve. This is the worst form of tedious RPG nonsense, doing repetitive inventory management to make sure the numbers go up fast enough. Honestly if your shooting is good enough, none of it's necessary anyway; good weapon, enemy AI, and encounter design allow for a much more interesting combat playground than going from Shotgun I to Shotgun II.

Unfortunately while the in combat movement and shooting felt good, the enemy design was rather lackluster. And the switch to open worlds meant that encounters were no longer well designed, but just repeated fights against rando batches of the same old ugly space bad guys. This aspect of the game was far from bad, but it really topped out at about goodish.

[Inarius]

I pretty quickly soured on any parts of Andromeda where anybody was opening their mouths. The narrative didn't really hang together and completely failed to motivate me, and pretty much everybody was horribly written. Worse, the gameplay and story really didn't mesh up well at all. I spent all this time running around on a planet raising a meter, and when it was full enough a colony instantly appeared and... pretty much nothing else changed. If the plot revolves around terraforming space magic, I expect to see some impressive terraforming space magic. When I wasn't engaged in meter-raising I was harvesting raw materials, but these were only good for crafting better versions of the same damn guns so I could keep up with the power curve. This is the worst form of tedious RPG nonsense, doing repetitive inventory management to make sure the numbers go up fast enough. Honestly if your shooting is good enough, none of it's necessary anyway; good weapon, enemy AI, and encounter design allow for a much more interesting combat playground than going from Shotgun I to Shotgun II.

Unfortunately while the in combat movement and shooting felt good, the enemy design was rather lackluster. And the switch to open worlds meant that encounters were no longer well designed, but just repeated fights against rando batches of the same old ugly space bad guys. This aspect of the game was far from bad, but it really topped out at about goodish.

I'm one of those odd people in that I like open worlds to have a sort of barren feel to them instead of being overly cramped so the open world sections of Andromeda were right up my alley. I also thought the hissing wastes in Inquisition were great too and I know a lot of people have gripes about that area haha. I'm also find with abstracting concepts like the terraforming stuff, but I will concede that Bioware being a AAA company really really should of put more effort into making the system work better. The grinding up gear parts don't really bother me much either but I can totally understand if that was a big turnoff for you. Really it was the companions and supporting cast that made the world feel utterly unenjoyable. For me if they had companions on par with the prior ME games or any of the Dragon Age game I think I would of looked more favorably on Andromeda than I currently do.

[Morty]

Have you ever played Jade Empire? Because IMHO that is probably the best main storyline Bioware has ever done, with a twist that you will likely genuinely not see coming.

Jade Empire is underappreciated in general, for all its flaws. Doing away with inventory management and focusing on fighting styles that actually feel different was another big plus.

[Lord Raziere]

Jade Empire is underappreciated in general, for all its flaws. Doing away with inventory management and focusing on fighting styles that actually feel different was another big plus.

Indeed, I have it on my current PC.

shame the last time I tried playing it, it crashed to desktop. that and if I want to get back to playing it, I'll have to refigure out the keyboard controls, which is always the suckiest part of playing on PC without a controller.

[Giggling Ghast]

On the off chance anyone's interested, David Gaider was a speaker at PAX this week where he announced his new game Chorus.

However, he also briefly talked about the cancelled DA2 expansion. Here's a transcript:

After Dragon Age 2 we were supposed to work on an expansion called "Exodus" and I was really looking forward to this because we'd cut DA2 a bit short. I felt it really lacked a coherent ending. Thing is, it got cancelled. First time that that ever happened to me. The team felt it would be better to roll the time into the next project so we could make the third Dragon Age game bigger and better rather than try and put out an expansion and end up making the third game on a tight schedule as well. It made sense but I was devastated.

My biggest regret: [chuckles] I never got to kill Varric. If you're a Varric fan, hear me out.

The entire game - Dragon Age 2 - was written from his point of view. And the expansion caught up to his present and then played out an ending where only he, as the party's dwarf, could get close enough to Corypheus' Red Lyrium to destroy it. But it poisoned him. And in a scene that was sort of reminiscent of "The Wrath of Khan," he dies in Hawke's arms in a very moving moment. A transition for Varric from rogue to hero for the sake of his best friend. And DA2 would end as it began - with Varric.

[LibraryOgre]

I've started over a couple times... the last was pretty much just "Beeline to Denerim to activate Berserker and Duelist specialties"

[Psyren]

My biggest regret: [chuckles] I never got to kill Varric. If you're a Varric fan, hear me out.

The entire game - Dragon Age 2 - was written from his point of view. And the expansion caught up to his present and then played out an ending where only he, as the party's dwarf, could get close enough to Corypheus' Red Lyrium to destroy it. But it poisoned him. And in a scene that was sort of reminiscent of "The Wrath of Khan," he dies in Hawke's arms in a very moving moment. A transition for Varric from rogue to hero for the sake of his best friend. And DA2 would end as it began - with Varric.[/I]

I never thought I'd say this... but I'm glad Gaider didn't get to write something, because Varric in Inquisition was fantastic. Sorry not sorry

[halfeye]

Currently pretty cross about the cutscenes that lead straight into battles which means any save you make puts you at the beginning of the stupid cutscene animation, which then plays out again before you can get anything done. Also unimpressed with mechanics which mean your party isn't dead, but you can't do anything, and it takes them ten minutes (slight exaggeration, but still) to die, but you can't do anything while they are dying.

[Morty]

I've started over a couple times... the last was pretty much just "Beeline to Denerim to activate Berserker and Duelist specialties"

Origins' specialization mechanics are pretty bizarre. I wonder what the reasoning was between account-wide unlocking them. Another holdover from the design process, maybe? Though of course given how scattered they were, I'm not going to complain about being able to use them right off the bat in further playthroughs.

[Rynjin]

Origins' specialization mechanics are pretty bizarre. I wonder what the reasoning was between account-wide unlocking them. Another holdover from the design process, maybe? Though of course given how scattered they were, I'm not going to complain about being able to use them right off the bat in further playthroughs.

It's to encourage further playthroughs. There are multiple endings, and a few Specializations are mutually exclusive with the "correct" quest result (like Reaver).

[Morty]

It's to encourage further playthroughs. There are multiple endings, and a few Specializations are mutually exclusive with the "correct" quest result (like Reaver).

It's been a while, but can't you just... unlock the specialization and reload? According to the wiki, apparently you can. Like I said, bizarre.