No one's brought up that Bethesda released Arena and Daggerfall as free downloads? I thought that was generous of them, but I sure don't see any old Arena/Daggerfall fans complaining about how Bethesda made them free. I mean, if those original Arena players only waited one decade, they could have had the game for free instead of having to pay for it.

The difference is that you don't need to buy Fallout 3 to get it.

Yes, that's the issue that everyone is so pissed about... :rolleyes:

In that case, I'll bring up Valve once again. As I already said, Portal was offered for free only through Steam. That means that you had to download and install Steam and register a Steam account in order to get it. Indeed, doing all that is free (as opposed to buying DA2), but it's pretty much the same thing - Valve increasing the number of people who use Steam by forcing them to use Steam if they want to get Portal for free, while at the same time that conveniently increases general interest in the upcoming Portal 2 (if that's your favourite way of looking at things - glass half empty). So I ask again - why was no one pissed off about that? I haven't seen a single person say not even one bad comment about that move by Valve, whereas now it's almost that I haven't seen a single person say that what BioWare has done is a nice thing. Why? That makes no sense to me.

Neither do I, the story of Origins was overdone at that point, not to mention now. It was refreshing to see something different for once.

EDIT: You paid for something and now someone gets it for free. Act like an advlt and deal with it.

Does it really matter so much what other people think about it...? :mellow: For the record I'm one of those who's somewhat unimpressed by the offer, but it's just another opinion. :shrug:

Those are so old that their entire market value is based on the scarcity of hard copies.

Well EA is evil and thus they must have ulterior motives giving away something for free, whereas Valve are the champions of the PC platform and do stuff like this for the love of the players :hehe:

It might've been a better idea to give some of their older games for free, such as NWN or BG, but of course they want to increase the ME playerbase for ME2 DLC and ME3. There's the ulterior motive

Well there is always an ulterior motive when a commercial game company decides to (temporarily) release one or more of their games for free, whether it's to make their public image better or to increase the player-base of that or another game or both.

I understand they don't like it because it was dumbed down a lot from the first one. For example character creation has a lot of stuff removed, like the ability to pick another race besides human. Also you can't change your companions armor, the game is shorter, there are less places to explore, you can't talk to your companions at anytime, the characters aren't as good as DAO, and most people think its more linear than DAO was. I for one still like this game because the story is good, I don't like all the changes they've made but I do like the combat better in this game on consoles.

I think what some people have a problem with is the phrase "dumbing down": whether or not it was intentional, it can have somewhat pejorative connotations. But that aside, I'm inclined to agree; although not all of those points bothered me quite so much, I think it was pruned back excessively and whilst the same approach worked well with ME2 in that it felt streamlined minus some of the cruft from ME1 (with reservations), they pushed the idea much too far with DA2 which IMHO suffered as a result, especially in combination with it being rushed to market.

Again, I also enjoyed playing it a lot, but I was left with a nagging feeling that it could have been better both in terms of quality and quantity: it was a good game that could have been great.

So was ME2, yet people LOVE it.

Some did. I hated it.

Yes but a lot of people hated it aswell.

Even ME feel to much of a shooter for me, unless of course, you like "the pause".

It basically was a shooter. Thats why they just said screw it with ME2 and made it a pure shooter.

But the pointless cutscenes they make it an rpg!

The choices also. It is a RPG but just barely.

I didn't like ME2 at all but the first ME was pretty good, I'm replaying ME2 in hopes of ME3 actually being decent.

And yet it gets heaps of praise, and beats legitimate rpgs and gets rpg of the year among other crap it dosent deserve. If it was advertised as a shooter then it would be a good one, but its trying to be something its not, and that annoys me, especially when it beats other things that are much more rpg heavy.

I agree, even if Mass Effect 2 was a great game. It does not deserve RPG based awards because it really isn't a RPG. In fact, Mass Effect 2 makes Fallout 3 look like a tactical RPG and thats a borderline shooter.

No, I don't like it for many more reasons than a "local" story.

Yes, I played it; my brother bought it. Lost interest in it and had no intention of finishing it.

Some of the reasons I don't like it; character restrictions, weapon restrictions, can't build the party I want, trashing continuity with Origins and Awakening, the super hyper kung fu movie over the top fighting, disjointed story, voiced pc, and the wheel o'hints that kills choosing dialogue, for starters. The zombiespawn retcon, gumby ogre mutation, the mentioned nowhere until now qunari horns, and the mutated elves, among others. The sudden addition of the "Enemy Parachute Corps" wave mechanic in *every* *single* *fight*. Companions your pc can't talk to unless they are in a certain area, companions not recognizing they have been with you when you can talk to them, and the "unique" clothing thing, additionally.

I could deal easily with a well told "local" story. Its the rest of the stuff that kills the game for me.

And yes, some people loved ME2. I didn't like it all that much. Between the obvious railroading and the "streamlining" that they corrected with dlc [Miranda's spandex catsuit], it was a continuation of Shepard's story. I'd like to see the end of that and seriously doubt I'll continue with any interest in the ME universe past that.

I didn't like most of the changes but I still recommend playing through it at least once. Its not that long so you wont suffer for long.

What exactly do you mean by these?



I actually liked that. I say if they're going to fight anyway, I don't see why it couldn't be amusing to look at. ^_^



Subjective claim, at best. I haven't noticed anything disjointed about the story.



Wait what...

You've... played Mass Effect (1 and/or 2) and liked it, right? :huh:



Again, I don't know what this means.



Hey, they're DA's Klingons. :shrug:



Yes, that was annoying...



I'm sorry to say that I don't quite understand what this is supposed to mean either.




(With seriously no hidden semi-offensive sarcasm, I think I might be a bit too sleep deprived, what with so frequently not understanding stuff... :unsure: )





edit:
And of course, I forgot to add the main reason why I absolutely love this game:


IT'S [CENSORED]ING DEPRESSING.

Ok guys, seriously, go make you own thread for [censored]ing about the state of affairs in rpgland. Your opinions have been stated, they are known, you basically have nothing else to add to this thread. Go fight the good fight somewhere else.

My turn to post pictures: http://i54.tinypic.com/2cxj4w1.jpg (Shamelesly from the http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6594400/1 thread from BSN :blush:)

Meanwhile my Spirit Healer Blood Mage seems to working quite well, the spells are quite handy too, an AoE, healing from corpses, and the Blood Slave have proven quite handy (using the sacrifice speel would be very out of character, so it don't acknowledge it), and with http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Cold-Blooded and some accessories the health loss is neglible, further offset with the health and health regeneration boost from Spirit Healer spec. Add mods for http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197988732882/screenshot/595807815426868200?tab=public http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197988732882/screenshot/595807815426871786/?tab=public