It wasn't the story part. If they had kept this as one in the Dragon Age franchise instead of calling it DA2, it wouldn't have bothered me as much. Even though they decided to make Awakening not matter. Its the other changes; the voiced pc, you can't build your party the way you want, you can't build your pc the way you want, because of the voiced pc you have to deal with the paraphrased wheel that they swore was phrased better so the dialogue would be a least a little closer, your pc can now teleport, the combat is sped up like your pc drank a gallon of straight caffeine and ate five pounds of sugar, and you have to turn tactics off to play tactically. Its hard to target aoe spells because the camera changed. I really wonder if any people on the EABioware site saying "the darkspawn now look more human" remembered the information from the first game. The darkspawn aren't blighted humans. The darkspawn are darkspawn, they come from broodmothers who were once human or dwarven or qunari. Blighted humans turn into ghouls, not darkspawn, and, if they live long enough, end up serving the darkspawn. Remember Tamlen? Or the militia member you have to kill in Awakening? He was not turning into a darkspawn. Iirc, the dev who worked on Jade Empire worked on DA2, and it shows. The stylized art style worked for a fantasy not quite ancient China, but, for me, it doesn't work for a game they already set a "style" for.

I only wish they had only changed the structure of the story. The only change I was happy about was the change to the two-handed weapons.

If I want to not know what my pc will say or do I can play ME or ME2. Hearing a voice that I don't particularly care for from my pc, saying things I never intended them to say really kills the game for me. I got interested in Shepard's story; if the only choice I had was Meers, I wouldn't have played ME. I have no male Shepards; the guy's voice annoyed me to the point he never made it off the Normandy. And yes, I would rather not play a game at all than have to grit my teeth and cringe every time my pc says something.

I do know people like the changes. I wish them luck and hope they enjoy it. But I won't be getting it any time soon, if at all.

Emotional Appeal is probably the main reason. Could you imagine if the Warden was voiced during the landsmeet situation with Loghain. That would be epic. I don't mind that Bioware added a voiced Hero because it's about the same between a Voiced hero and a non voiced hero dialoge wise. The only problem you do have is added memory for a voiced main character but that's a small problem.

I liked how Witcher handled voiced dialogue - short responses were repeated word for word, whereas longer responses displayed part of Geralt's reply, so you had a good idea what he was going to say. No cute icons, and no guessing, either. I hated how paraphrasing was handled in DA2 - it seemed it was deliberately designed to make you guess what your character was going to say, turning dialogue itself into a mini-game.

this is how i feel,
it seems to me that bioware are intent on turning their idea of games into their idea of fiction, with less and less actual "play" involved,
i enjoyed mass effect, but yeh, ended up annoyed a lot of the time during cut-scenes, and playing through again is an instant skip for all pvssyr,
their characters and dialogue, for all their dedication to making story based games, rarely rise above kid's cartoon show standards, worse in fact, kid's cartoons don't constantly repeat the glaringly obvious, or get weighed down with adolescent sensibilities and coolisms.
writing in games is really a funny and unique thing, it was left to programmers for so long that the standards are shockingly low - i hate it when non-gamers overhear stuff i'm playing, the writing is so out of key with the writing standards i have for movies and books, like way out of key - but it never really mattered that much anyway, we played to play, and sure, fix it and improve it, rockstar made good progress along these lines, lionhead too, but making it the focus of development? at the expense of user input? its the wrong direction as far as i'm concerned.

I agree with you on the writing in games being primarily subpar, and it seemed to me it headed south in DA2 from DA:O. If Bioware is going to put so much emphasis on cinematography, they really ought to hire someone who knows what they're doing.

All your criticism I understand, as most is based on preferred playstyle and visuals, except this. Where is it implied that they changed this aspect? Aveline's husband is merely concerned about what he will become, and shows the same signs of ghoul-ification he should. In case you meant that.

I myself find those darkspawn good, too. They look like the twisted versions of their origin races, just as they should. I can only bring up the same kind of criticism as in Origins: Having all of them look the same when coming from the same kind of Broodmother ruins their twisted-ness. It makes them more uniform, which they really shouldn't be, as the lore implies.
Anyway, I'm repeating myself. ^_^

(Oh, and no, Mike Laidlaw was only second lead writer of Jade Empire. JE was designed by Kevin Martens, who is now lead content designer of Diablo 3.)

It doesn't make sense because you aren't applying the little part to the context of what's going on. For example the "enough" selection. Your family is arguing about where to go next (If I recall correctly) and by selecting "enough" it means, okay I'm going to tell them shut up and lets move on. Your PC does just that " "Are you two insane? If we stand around we'll die."
I don't know.. I just don't understand all the misunderstandings with Mass Effect and now DA II's dialogue system. I've never selected a dialogue option and had it be something I did not intend. :shrug:

I finished the demo and I'm actually quite pleased with it. It is certainly a very different game from DAO but that doesn't make it a bad game. Just different. In reality I think they went too far in the wrong direction. In DAO the combat svcked because you just shuffled around and only really pressed any buttons to use a ability. It felt more like a real time-turn based RPG if that makes any sense. DA II's combat isn't that great because now we've went all God of War super fast moving ridiculousness.
Hopefully in DA III they will hit the sweet spot (I'm hoping the same for Mass Effect. They need to take a few steps back)

If I get DA II I'll most likely play as a female Hawke though. I prefer her voice actor. Her voice works well with the sarcastic dialogue options

DA 2's combat is way better then Origins. It was almost impossible to play as a duelwielding rogue in Origins because I'd barely have anytime to get into postion where I would Backstab the enemy and he already recovers from Dirty Hand. I think my philosophy is, I'll wait and see before I declare DA 2 a failure.

Yeah, mages were really powerful in DAO compared to the other classes. I did one solo rogue playthrough just for the challenge and it was really hard to get into position to backstab (especially solo of course).

In the PC demo it was a lot of fun to play a rogue as well a mage.

Frankly I liked the demo but frankly I quite dislike the gameplay...I just don't feel this fast paced action is better than DA Os...

This just occured to me, I would like if DA O 2 was made, we then got 2 series like Modern Warfare and whatever other series (Black Ops being the last game).

Forgot to mention that there was a funny thread on the Dragon Age forums. The family flees south into the darkspawn, after a few hours od debate we all came to realize. There was no reason for them to flee south. How long would they have had to wait for the darkspawn to cut them off to the north? Are they just that [censored]?

Edit
Ah, here it is. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6113727/1

I think this just sums up how [censored] of an ass pull it was to have them flee south. http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b146/bolebeau/map.jpg

Those darkspawn must run at the speed of light or something.

And two-handed sword warrior too As such i judged the game from the demo to be fun enough to play to justify a purchase. And there's really no other game i plan on buying until Mass Effect 3, The Last Guardian or Skyrim, whichever gets released first.

Buggy (though i hear the demo is based on 4 months old build, not the gold one), has some questionable design decisions, poor voice acting, and is rough around the edges, still fun enough to play to overlook those things. ...Huh, i forgot if was speaking of DA2 or a Bethesda game :unsure:

Since this thread is already here I thought I'd just ask a couple questions about it here rather than open another thread.

Lately I've wanted to try DA, but I just haven't been in that medieval fantasy mood lately. Though I sort of prepped myself up for it with something a little more subtle (Mount and Blade) and I think I'm ready to try it. Though in regards to Dragon Age (so I know what kind of game play I'm getting into) would anyone say it's comparable to Drakengard or Devil May Cry?

Final Question, would you recommend Demon's Souls or Dragon Age? Because I've been looking at both of them.

Demon's Souls, hands down. DA2 plays like an arcade game in comparison, AND Demon's Souls has multiplayer.

If you've played Baldur's Gate II, Dragon Age lives up to its reputation as a spiritual successor IMO. I definitely recommend buying the first Dragon Age (and we'll know soon enough whether DA 2 lives up to it, though I've preordered it). It comes across as "low fantasy" more than "high fantasy" to me, and avoids some of the fantasy cliches -- dwarves aren't Scottish and elves live in medieval ghettoes or as gypsies; mages are feared and tightly controlled. The different possible origin stories are among the greatest strength of the game, to me, even though this was dropped in the sequel in favor of human-only gameplay. Don't let this stop you from playing a dwarf or elf in DA, though, because to me their origins were even more interesting than the human origins (and the mage origin, whether played as an elf or a human, is also very good). They used at least 100 different voice-actors for the game -- compare that to "Oblivion" with its half-dozen. But anyway, I recommend the first DA.

IMO, by hitting the spacebar and micromanaging every character's actions, the pacing didn't feel much different from DAO. The main difference was that the rogues jump towards whoever they are attacking and can jump away to disengage.

In theory it shouldn't feel that much different but for some reason to me it does, possibly due to those hyped up animations, even the warrior is now ultra fast which is weird IMO

better than being super slow like in dao, i didn't mind the animations, rule of cool and all that good stuff

I haven't played Drakengard or Demon's Souls so I can't comment there, but it is in no way similar to Devil May Cry. I like both games so it's not meant as a shot at either, it just doesn't get much more far apart than Dragon Age and Devil May Cry. Though to be fair, I'm only familiar with DMC 1 and 3. Looking up gameplay of Drakengard, I see no similarity.

Unlike other recent Bioware games, DA:O doesn't feel to me like it's trying to be KotOR, so the comparison to their other games doesn't quite work either. I can see the attempted similarities to Baldur's Gate 2, but I would strongly disagree with the claim of it being a spiritual sequel as well, which I see as little more than a grab at bitter, jaded old fans without anything to back it up. Dragon Age is more RPG than action game, with quasi-turn-based combat. Characters will auto-attack a target you select, you can pause and issue specific orders, but there's none of that stuff like "run up to enemy, press attack button to immediately attack, press block to block, run around to avoid getting crowded, etc.", so if you're looking for something like Drakengard or Devil May Cry, look elsewhere. If you do like the more indirect-combat style of overhead RPG, though, you'll probably like Dragon Age.

They say Demon's Souls is the spiritual successor to King's Field (one of my most beloved series) and so I've been aching to see if it actually lives up to that claim. While the scenery resembles something straight out of King's Field it seems the game only operates in 3rd person view so I believe it's going to be quite difficult to live up to the legacy that is King's Field.


lol that made me chuckle

Never got to play Baldur's Gate so I wouldn't really be able to say. Though I think I'll give Demon's Souls a go first and by the time I'm done with that I can try DA. That and DA2 should be out by then so I can play both of them consecutively. Though when I see the vids for DA I keep thinking Drakengard??? I guess time will tell


Ahh okay that's a bit clearer now. I like both systems so I'll have to at least give DA a try.

They must have still been in Lothering during the attack. "Herp a derp! Whoa! Darkspawns iz attax nao! We no beet dem sinz deyz already to udder endz of villge!"

*Angry Male (lame) Hawke response* "dum famliez! Darkspawn eets u if no go nao! Rawrrr!"

:lmao:

I prefer the slow paced action from DA O :shrug: btw I don't think the animations are bad, I actually think they're quite good, I simply think they are waaay too fast.

I still can't believe people are trying to justify that as all plausible. They claim the horde was trying to be tactical, so they cut off Lake Calenhad and attack from the north? lol Wut? Why would you do that? You could escape and flee to Denerim if they did that. Okay so if they were smart they block the Denerim road by cutting across the forest. LOL WUT!? Then they can go around by lake Calenhad. So if they really wanted to be tactical surround the damn place so they can't go anywhere, but apparently that's too hard to think of. Not to mention it would mean having a smart opponent. Nope easier to activate ludicrous speed and warp hundreds of miles north east somehow through forest without road and perfectly block the [censored] hawk family who waited for the beasts to surround lothering on the western side. It's just not making any sense to me. What an ass pull to get them to go and see Flemmeth.

Edit
They don't deserve the last name Hawk. They're getting downgraded to the Bawk family, they can work their way back up from poultry to bird of prey once they earn some brains.

They deserve to be downgraded. The only plausible reason I can think of them being that slow is because they left when they saw that half of Lothering was destroyed. Hell, the Warden was unconcious for a little bit of time after Ostagar and still made it to Lothering before it was destroyed. If the Darkspawn were moving so fast as to stop the Bawk family from continuing North, then 2 years for the Warden to stop the Blight is ridiculous. Bioware has confused me. How fast is the Darkspawn invasion?

Are you trying to insert logic into a Bioware game? Seriously? Recall the Battle of Ostagar, where seemingly only the "unintelligent" Darkspawn figured out how to use catapults, and apparently, trebuchets?