First of all I'll say that TES games are a lot better than the Dragon Age series in general. It's obvious where Dragon Age is lacking compared to TES:
- Not open world
- Very scripted
- No emergent gameplay (if it's not explicitly programmed it can't be done)

It's not fair to put lore up there as DA is a much younger series.

However I feel that DA did some things better:
- Meaningful moral choices with consequences
- Mature-ish gripping story
- Your choices are referenced even to the sequel DA2 (not very important I know, but still a nice touch)
- Multitude of effects with believable visual counterparts and combinations of spells, not known a priori, that really do damage

I'm not gonna put battles requiring tactics in that list either as in TES you don't have companions.

Now with a probable M rating for Skyrim, I think that Beth doesn't really have any constraints holding its creativity. Fallout improved on this department so I have my hopes pretty high. Give us meaningful moral choices: "Kill him and you won't get that. Let him survive and the bunny dies". You want to be a saint? Ok but be prepared for a much harder path to wealth. Be a villain and your infamy makes everyone hate you. I expect serious crime in the large cities and the ability to work with it or against it...

History is written by the winners. What if they don't like you? They can make your life hard by spreading lies about you and make you sound like a villain.

Give us political intrigues. Paint the world in shades of grey not in black and white. No person should be pure good/bad. Force us to pick a side. Don't just tell us "Ok these are the bad guys, kill them". Don't be afraid to kill off characters that the player might have liked. Even better, give us the guilt that we actually caused it!

I'm sure that all the above have already been said countless times, but I really believe that these things are what make RPGs great.

Your thoughts?

Hey guys, I know you just forked for the game, but if you want all this extra [censored] you've got to pay us more real money!

Day one [censored] DLC, please don't do this, I bought your god-damned game, give me the content I paid for.

Here's a lesson to learn from DA2- Don't make crappy games.

One of the major gripes I have with DA 2 is the fac tthat you can't gear up your companions, this is possibly one of the worst descisions Bioware has made. Also, as Brood said, having DLC avaliable on the day of release is a big nono. Infact just don't do DLC at all, and do a proper expansion or two

This.

Concerning black/white and gray sides: Morrowind did it right. Oblivion did it wrong.

So many years ago I played Morrowind, I'm still amazed by the story in it and how it progressed. I hope Skyrim will be the same.

So, there should be a "Morrowind: Lessons to learn" thread instead, I'd say. That's more likely that Bethesda would follow than DA2.

Imagine the nightmare of managing 9ish companions gear and all. It was annoying enough to get spammed with rings, amulets and the like 24/7 and having to distribute them to your companions.

Well, managing companions' gear in Dragon Age: Origins was completely doable.

Also, I do doubt there are a lot of useful things to learn from Dragon Age 2. Seriously.

DA2 was some pretty mediocre stuff. The so-called "moral choices" Bioware's famous for are usually anything but. In ME 1/2 you could be a bit of a [censored]. That's it. In DA 1/2 you can be a pretty huge [censored]. In none of those games were choices that really made me pause and consider what I'm about to do. The first KoToR had this, but Bioware's lost their touch since.

1) Aren't there enough threads already about this?
2) I've haven't finished playing Morrowind
3) Comparing with games made by other companies is more productive imo as it is possible to get ideas the devs haven't already thought of.

I can see there is a lot of hate for DA2 out there and justified too (DLCs on day 1?). I really hate DLCs alltogether. However I'm sure I have seen threads here requesting DLCs for Vampires, DLCs for Lycanthropy and so on... I don't feel like DA2 is so crappy as to how some people make it out to be.

The thread is not about how much we hate DA2 but what good things it has done.

Considering I did that exact thing in Kotor 1 and 2, DA: O I do believe I have a pretty good Idea... and It's awesome. I don't want customization taken away in an RPG, it's almost always a bad thing-

I think that's something Bethesda should NOT learn from Bioware, and I'm sure everyone else will agree.

But anyway, I haven't played Dragon Age 2, so I can't comment on it, but I played the first game, and I enjoyed it, and while it lacked some things that the Elder Scrolls had like an open world, it did do some things pretty well too, better than past Elder Scrolls games ever did, and better than I expect Skyrim to as well, but while some of those things Bethesda could learn from, I think some work because of the nature of the game, and wouldn't really work in Skyrim. Take the companions in Bioware games, for example, Skyrim isn't going to be able to do companions that well, because party based gameplay is not the main focus of the game, not to mention Bethesda seems to be going for a quantity over quality approach with companions, so I certainly wouldn't expect most of them to have a detailed background, personality or have options to get into a meaningful relationship with them.



Considering that I don't usually use every companion available on a regular basis in a party based game, I don't see much of a problem there. Usually I just travel with whichever characters I like best unless I have a quest that requires otherwise or I happen to need a specific character's talents for a specific situation, and I never found managing the equipment of characters in Dragon Age to be too much trouble, really, the hard part with companions was making sure they were all on good terms with me, and that's fine, because usually if companions didn't like me, it was the concequence of some choice I made. In any case, when I travel with companions on a regular basis, I want to outfit them with whatever gear I want, within reason (If one of the companions is a dog, I don't expect to give it a suit of armor made for a human, for example.)

I can see this thread hurtling towards a lock...

Suffice to say that if I was developing Skyrim, and someone suggested I had "lessons to learn" from any aspect of DA2, I'd be inclined to laugh, or possibly take offense.

Another huge flaw in pretty much all of Biowares recent games: You can't be evil. You can hurt your party members "feelings" and do generally mean stuff, but in no way is this comparable to a moral dilemma. Beyond that, the entire time I played through DA 1-2 it felt linear as hell. You get what, all of 10 locations to go to repeatedly in DA2 (zomg, you can visit them at night too!). I'll take no faux-moral choices and a huge world to explore over some linear garbage where you always end up the superhero anyway.

It did work much better in the DA:O, I think it's because you aren't spammed with as much gear as you are in DA2.

Another good lesson to learn from DA2 is the fact that most of the equipment had the same name and icon. To know wheter "Ring", "Ring" or "Ring" was the one with +20 attack wasnt very visible at all. Unless you hovered the pointer above the item ofc.

It was my impression that this is what role-playing games are about

This.

Dragon Age 2 is a completely mediocre game, and there isn't one aspect of it that I would say is great. So unless Bethesda wants to make a mediocre game, they shouldn't learn anything from DA2.

da2 is crap full stop, combat is aweful you dont even hit the opponant

So supposedly you are a Beth dev. Your last TES game was Oblivion.

You can't see anything done better in DA2? You didn't like how the main plot was told (with Varric being the Narrator and all)? How about the whole Qunari thing in Act 2? Not interested?

What were the moral choices you offered to the player in Oblivion? Seems to me there is a lesson to learn

I have to say, DA2 was utter [censored]. From the combat, awful voice acting, copy paste dungeons and just about everything else so here's hoping (and knowing) Bethesda will take nothing from that game.

The deal killer for me on DAII was the idea that you have to play a male human character. No role playing involved at all.

Thank you, Bethesda, for being one of the few--if not the only--game companies that still lets you design your own character!

Actually you are able to play as a female, aswell as customize your face. That said, it was a huge step back from origins nonetheless

Voice acting?



I got to play a female one! Sarcasm aside, if you guys just post to bash DA2 then really don't post at all. Anyone disagreeing with my initial post WITH arguments please post. Otherwise mods please lock this thread.

Ah, so you mean a lesson as in learn NOT to do this, in which case, I'd agree, I like to be able to tell the difference between one ring and the next without having to look at its abilities every time.



To be fair, Bioware allowed that in Dragon Age: Origins and both Mass Effect games so far released, though in the latter case you had to be a human and your last name had to be Shepherd, but you could choose to be a male or female character and choose your appearance, I'm not sure if the third game will keep this up though, and New Vegas qualifies as well since it was developed by Obsidian, not Bethesda, so Bethesda certainly isn't the only company that has done character customization in recent games, but even without playing the game, I can say removing that in Dragon Age 2 was a very bad move, and if Bethesda decided to go the same route, then THAT would be the death of the Elder Scrolls to me. There are a lot of things Bethesda could do to the Elder Scrolls that I might not approve of, but won't lead to me giving up on the series, but removing character creation is not one of them.



Sounds like a good idea. We're here to talk about Skyrim, not Dragon Age 2, if you want to argue against the idea that Bethesda could learn lessons from Dragon Age 2, that's fine, but if you just want to bash the game without posting anything that relates to Skyrim, it's probably best to do so in the Dragon Age thread in Community Discussion instead.