Slashdot Mirror
Dragon Age II Released
Today marks the US launch of Dragon Age II, the sequel to BioWare's popular 2009 RPG Dragon Age: Origins. Like its predecessor and other BioWare RPGs, Dragon Age II is non-linear and has extensive dialog, though this time the story focuses on a particular character, Hawke, whose race and identity you can't change. A demo of the game is available, and early opinions noted both the impressive art direction and less punishing difficulty settings. BioWare has also released an optional ~1GB texture pack for the PC version that bumps up the level of detail for owners of high end computers. They explained some of the technological changes they made in a couple of blog posts. It's available for Windows, OS X, the PS3, and the Xbox 360.
Another nose-dive for productivity in the developed world!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So I was one of the suckers who bought DA 1 on release day. Didn't buy any DLC, because Bioware DLC is always overpriced.
Eventually they come out with the 'ultimate edition', which is the game, expansion, and all DLC for the same price I paid originally. That part is normal, and alright.
Where it gets ridiculous is that for me to add the DLC to the game I already bought on the same day this new verison came out would have cost MORE then just buying the game again and getting everything thrown in.
The pricing model is sufficiently out to lunch that I'll wait this time.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
That's a lot of words to say you don't like the genre.
I don't like things, too. Mostly I just don't buy them.
Nope. Mana Clash killed 95%+ of enemy mages in the game in one shot, every time. As a non-friendly-fire AoO.
Basically if their name wasn't in red, they were going to die from it.
I agree. Mass Effect I was a LOT BETTER and delivered far more wide range of modifications and weapons... MEII came out and dumbed it down drastically. The worlds were far more limited, interaction is more limited... it's more of a "go here do this good boy!" I am afraid they ruined Dragon Age with numbing down of the whole system like they did for Mass Effect.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You can carry over a save from Origins or Awakening but I haven't seen where it comes into play yet.
It would suck.
If I'm playing an RPG I want to play an RPG that gets the RPG things right, if I want to play an RTS I'll play an RTS not some shitty hybrid RPG/RTS/FPS/Puzzle/Adventure/Collectible Card/Fighter/Flight Simulator game that does nothing well.
Sure if they want to tell an epic story have an RPG tell the first part and Civilization tell the last part, but don't make it all one game.
Well my GF is a avid RPG player, and enjoys cRPG's on the side. She got home oh an hour or two ago. Installed, starting playing 30ish mins in she was raging and screaming going where are my choices and what's up with this shitty dialog. I want a RPG, not a action-adventure game. Which promptly 5mins later resulted in her storming out of the house, and driving off game in hand. I think she's out for a refund, and woe to the person who tries to refuse it.
I know people will go bahwhaha GF what? Yeah some of us managed to hook one anyway.
I didn't even have a chance to play, but I'm hearing a lot of people use the phrase "Dragon the Mass Age Effect". Which doesn't bode well, and I get the feeling EA has given Bioware the touch of death.
Om, nomnomnom...
Usually they have terribly dull and uninteresting storylines you couldn't be bothered to give a goddamn about.
Yes, well not all RPGs can have you be the son/daughter of the dead lord of Murder on a quest to discover your heritage and powers. That would get old real soon.
Oblivion remains an unbelievably gorgeous game, jaw-dropping and absolutely amazing. But the counter-intuitive leveling system took immersion and broke it on the wheel. The trite and boring storyline snuffed out any sense of weight and meaning in the gameplay.
The expansion made it even prettier, although I forgot the name already. Oblivion had a lot of issues, and the most annoying one was having only 4 voice actors for the entire game (not counting Patrick Stewart). If you're complaining about the leveling system I'm guessing that you never played Morrowind, which used the same leveling system for characters (although with slightly different skills). What was really broken was enchanting if you'd keep the soulstone that one of the deities would give you. I'm talking "murdering the entire world in under two hours"-kind of broken with corpses flying left and right.
On top of that was another annoying issue: scaled level encounters. While it served to keep the game interesting, the effect was quite the opposite. The encounters didn't really become any harder, just longer and more tedious. In the end it became so over the top that simple bushrobbers had the best gear. To top it off, the nearly psychic guards who could detect you murdering people and stealing stuff even if you were inside a building. The guards of course had one a single line for catching your doing evil: "Stop right there criminal scum!", after which the player would invariably choose "Resist" at which point all the guards in town would start attacking you all saying the following four sentences "HRWAH!" "You should've paid the fine!" "HRAAAGH!" and "Help! Murder! Someone's been murdered!". To this day, those guards still haunt me.
Storywise Oblivion was kind of okay, except it was much too short. The main storyline would take only two evenings to complete, and with the guild storylines combined you'd have about a week of evenings before you'd finished the game. The dungeons that were spread across the lands were pretty much copy pasted. If you'd done a dungeon or 5 you'd recognize most parts after that. Same for the ruins, same for the areas in oblivion. There was very little unique loot in Oblivion. In an RPG I'd expect to find a bit more variation than "Randomly Generated Enchantment Stats Sword #29485". You'd expect that in diablo, but not in a more traditional RPG.
But ... If you think that's bad for a modern RPG, I suggest you avoid the genre entirely. A prime candidate of everything wrong combined would be Two Worlds, and to a lesser extent Two Worlds 2. Those are just HORRIBLE in every department. A surprisingly decent game was The Witcher. It's no Baldurs Gate or Planescape : Torment storywise, but it does decent enough, has a neat skill and alchemy system. Don't expect to go looting "Vorpal Sword +5" or something like that, since it doesn't accomodate that, but it's fun.
And I'd like to second whoever said the original Dragon Age had hideous graphics. Ugly beyond all belief. I don't know how they were able to release it in this day and age.
Meh, graphics... Give me decent gameplay or a damn good storyline and I'd play it if it was still sprite based. I personally care less to see each blade of grass moving in the wind, than I care about a story that keeps me entertained enough to want to know how it ends. Fallout 3 looked really terrible in my opinion, but the story was more than involving enough for me to see it through 'till the end.
And finally, it's always the little things that do it for me in an RPG. Sometimes it's finding a rare weapon in a chest, or finding a small side-quest that is actually involving, or f
back 10-20 years ago, computer tech was limited. you couldnt stray too far off from a format. you had to end the game in the same format you started it. in the same genre. because platforms didnt have the resources to expand to many different formats and their technical demands in regard to hard disk, processing power, and memory.
If only system hardware were the only limitation...oh wait, it's not. Have you ever played FF7? There were mini-games all over the place, including one which was essentially a really shitty RTS. Or how about Halo, where you can go solo or command a small squad, even jumping into vehicles? Hell, Halo: Reach even included space combat.
The problem isn't that games don't cross genres, its that companies that are good at RPGs don't necessarily have the time, budget, or expertise to make a multi-genre game. A good way to think about it is how many shitty "Me too!" games there are out there for every blockbuster that comes out. Even if you're just developing a single-genre game, most companies have a hard time meeting the player's expectations.
You don't have to pick on videogames either--you can look at the traditional market too. The only system I know that combined RPG, Strategic, Tactical (both Naval AND Land), and Diplomatic elements in full was the Birthright setting in 2nd Ed D&D, and even it was crippled by its simplistic and boring tactical component. I'm a miniature wargamer right now playing Warmachine/Hordes, and even though its parent company Privateer Press is making moves to get back into the RPG market, I'm not sure if they'll really be able to pull off a scale-resilient setting and compatible RPG system.
tl;dr: Shit's hard man. Try it sometime.
ME2 and DA:O are terrible and I regret purchasing them.
From this statement we can also garner that you don't like Firefly, ice cream, or a baby's laughter. It's okay to have your opinions.
and NPCs asking for my credit card left and right.
ONCE in the entire game is "left and right"?????
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I refuse to buy it because of EA though. The last Dragon Age I had to sign into their servers to use the equipment that was supposed to come with the game. (Collector's Edition "perks".)
If/When Bioware splits ties with EA, then I will resume purchasing Bioware games.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Whoooo
This news story sounds like it what was submitted by an EA publicist.
A lot of people have taken issue with the dumbed down combat, limited customization options, extremely linear story, bad graphics and a dialogue wheel that is essentially broken into compassionate, obnoxious or humourous responses. This game is a pale impression of it's predecessor. It seems kind of ironic that the series designed to resurrect the cRPG may be the very thing that destroys it. Before buying this game, read this article and save yourself some money.