It's not a bad game. It's just an "only good" game. More importantly though, most of the critics just complain about Bioware betraying them because they don't make a game like they would want to play it.
I like the direction, it's just that DA2 leaves a little bad after taste of "could have been better with more time", that just won't vanish. Give me a DA3 with this combat, less hordes of enemies and pure filler combat areas and better tactics, and I'm fine. The rest can be solved by taking more time to create it.


(You're also right about the grinding bit. Anyone who played Wizardry should praise adequately tightened level spreads.)

Overall, I'd suggest that "dying" is more adequate than "evolving." I'm not sure if it's been linked yet, but http://i55.tinypic.com/25stp40.jpg. It definitely seems to reflect some of the direction things have gone. (GRANTED, the screen on the left is from something that was closer to an IF/dialogue game than an actual RPG, but still...)

It's actually something happening across the board in gaming: major developers of the past few years have been taking a "screw the hardcoe players" approach in favor of dumbing-down their games with the idea that they can sell million more: game development, admittedly, has ceased to be a passion project, and is now rooted firmly in cold, faceless business. The goal is no longer to make a "work of art"... But to make a "successful product."

This is what we see in RPGs, too: the serious, hardcoe and in-depth nature is being softened to appeal to the vaguely defined group called "casual gamers." The effects of this shift are already becoming deleterious; in many ways, modern RPGs are as complex as modern FPSes, thanks to the push in FPSes to add "classes" and "ranks" to virtually everything. Eventually it seems like the two genres, along with others, may merge, and variety will be lost.

The irony here, of course, is that the market-based stragey being used is entirely fallacious. Currently, the strategy, spelled out more, is "screw the hardcoe crowd, and entice the casuals: the hardcoes will follow us wherever we go, right?" There's two major problems with that, though. First off, no, the hardcoe crowd WON'T; you'll lose them as you move. Eventually you can lose all of them. On the flip side, there's problems with the casual crowd. For one, they're finicky, even moreso than the hardcoe crowd: they want the best shinies in graphics, and won't forgive ANY readily apparent bugs. Developing a game to target them takes vastly more resources.

And here's the bite: casual gamers must be re-won every release. You don't hear about the casual crowd playing Halo: Reach talking about how much they loved Halo: Combat Evolved or Halo 2 anymore, now do you? No, once the game's no longer new, it's forgotten. Casual gamers don't cling to anything. So those huge cuts that irked the hardcoe crowd, and massive outlay done to try and bring the casuals on board? You gotta do that EVERY game to keep standing out. It's only the hardcoe crowd that's forgiving enough to cling on and stay loyal game-after-game: the casuals don't see what's so special. It's why, for instance, no one buys EVERY release of Madden NFL.

A further irony is that this dumbing-down isn't necessary to get the casuals; it was fallacious enough to think that attracting casuals is the only way to make million-sellers... Far bigger to think that "dumbing down is necessary to make millions of sales." Even if we look at console games, (supposedly the bastion of dumbed-down casual if you ignore the mere existence of Popcap Zynga...) what do we see as top-sellers? Pretty solidly unsimplified series, like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, etc. These are games that don't bother to streamline: MGS remains ever as thick and incomprehensible in its plot, and FF keeps including convoluted stats. Of course, then there's also Pokémon, which in spite of its appearance as a "kids game" only advlts could possibly be spending all the time to figure out and tweak with all the countless invisible numbers with Effort Values and the like to min/max their team to the extreme. These games clearly are not "streamlined," yet are making far more sales than Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, or Mass Effect titles could ever hope to reach.

As a last thing, what really hurts is to see these previously-respectable developers actually going forth, feeling that they are righteous. You havbe things like Todd Howard's horrendous "if Apple made an RPG" comment, which ENTIRELY misses the point on both Apple and RPGs:

• Apple takes bog-standard hardware (they've NEVER used a CPU or GPU that wasn't used in tons of other applications) and packs it up in their own aesthetic... Often sacrificing practicality in the process; they still call it genius, though, even when the tiny design of the iPhone 4 meant that the antenna was prone to problems, and the glass panels prone to cracking.
  
• Apple software isn't really "streamlined." It just prevents you from doing things that are still there: a pretty rug over a creaky and rotting floor. This is very much the last thing an RPG should do.

In the end, though, this model of business will largely fold, I predict. It could be hurtful to the previous big companies... Possibly, major companies at the forefront of this, like EA and Capcom, are already starting to feel some pinch after alienating so many. Eventually, the big companies may find themselves in financial trouble as their mistakes start to catch up to them. Whether this means they learn from their mistakes and return to making the hardcoe games that are wanted, or die off and are replaced by former-indie developers instead, is an open question.

RPG's are the future of gaming it's just we need more developers to copy what Beth does with their RPG's. I'm not saying they need to make the same type of RPG just the Developmental time. 3 to 4 years is the amount of time you need to make an RPG. Any less and you'll end up with New Vegas or Dragon Age 2. One is certainly playable and good but the other is average.

Also we need more Todd Howard's

Well put.

There's also the massive bias of the picture, picking a screencap of a bug for the right hand pic.

Wow, I wasnt expecting this topic to get so many posts or a second thread.

I suppose that people on an RPG forum are going to be a lot more interested in it like I was



I dont think that is biased, the comparison between the two pics is about the dialogue options which is still valid regardless of the graphics bug.

To be honest, that wasn't my first pic... I'd seen somewhere an alternative one that WASN'T glitched, that instead was just a scene of the player being hit on, with the options of "I love you/Go away/I'm hungry." However, I can't find that one... Only the one I linked.

And screwy-face aside, the dialog options are the point. Very, VERY generic: you get the "generic positive choice," "generic negative choice," and "OLOL RANDOM." Makes it very hard to role-play whatsoever if none of the choices are particularly sane.

This one:

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/9383/wx45j.jpg

the combat in Origins is weighty and realistic and awesome and the only reason i played the game
the combat in 2 is cheap as hell, like pure cartoon devil may cry nancy-boys with terrible hair doing flips and twirls and WTFHAPPENED?

TBH I just cant stand the loss of the top down view that DAO had. I cant enjoy party based RPGs without a decent overhead view.

Third / First person view is only ok in solo RPG games.

I agree with that, the consoles got screwed the 1st time around in Origins with the Camera view and Bioware never addressed the problem in DA2, in fact they made it worse by adapting the Origins console view to the PC version.

I'm not a huge fan of combat in either game, DAO's felt really clunky too me and DA2's felt really unrealistic.

Oh so everyone finds out PC gamins isn't dieing. Now it's RPG's? Shall I get out my dartboard to see what's going to be "dying" next.

America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiyH4QS8nCk

I just got the idea for a bad sit-com.

If by dying you mean becoming less mainstream, then I'd say yes. Just because BioWare and Bethesda aren't making the RPG's they used to doesn't mean the whole freaking genre is dying.

No kidding, though personally Skyrim looks amazing. Same with Mass Effect 3 (I hope, but have no reaosn to suspect what happened to DA2)... Dragon Age 2 is really the odd duckling out on this one with almost no redeeming features. Oh wait, now it all makes sense. This is just another secret thread to bash the game in. While I'm all for that, it seems sort of redundant.

Don't you mean becoming more mainstream? Gaider said that he wants CoD's fanbase (I'm paraphrasing). Doesn't get more mainstream than CoD.

Todd had that interview where he said he improves upon a game by looking at what's superfluous and cutting it out, rather than fixing it. Bioware did the same approach with ME2 (it actually worked well because they did actually fixed the combat) and DA2 (didn't work so well because they didn't really fix anything). To me it's more a change of how the games are being made rather than the genre dying. It's moving more towards "how can we make this fun for the most people for the least amount of effort", rather than "how can we make an awesome game?". That's a form of evolution, right?

No, he didn't. Fernando Melo, senior producer of DA2, said that people play games with RPG elements without noticing them, and that you can expand your audience by hiding those well even in a very RP-centric game. Yes, among those was CoD with its perk system in multiplayer. But one would have to be very desperate to translate that into "We want the CoD audience now".

I think the roleplaying game that embodies all the qualities fans want is never coming, and this isn't anything new. I think one problem is a publisher would rather take a risk on a shooter or MMO then on a brand new roleplaying franchise. The Witcher was cool, but already had a fanbase to draw on in Europe. BioWare's an established developer which has a large fanbase. Other than that, pretty much nothing. All the developers of the late '90s and early 2000's that created all those memorable games are out of business.

Plus, something like 90% of actual retail sales come from advlts, people with jobs and other obligations. I know I don't have a ton of time to devote to gaming any more. And the advlts that do, usually play World of Warcraft.

Ah, yes. Had the frame from that instead of the other one. But both demonstrate how "deep" the dialogue has gotten.

The real thing I notice, though, is back in the 1990s and early 2000s, any blunders with things like the dialogue, etc. were simply because the developer wasn't quite sure how to go about it: a lot of such things were brand-new and untested. So, there were bound to be mistakes.

Contrast this to today, where there's tons of knowledge on how to properly implement these sort of things without looking embarrassing, it's that the developers aren't even trying.

Again, this falls back on an EXTREMELY fallacious train of thought that major developers like Bioware (and, if we're to believe, gamesas) are taking. Again, it's that they believe that to draw in large numbers, they have to dumb things down. But if you ask yourself what the top-two selling RPG brands are, what are they? Pokémon and World of WarCraft, both with numbers that even gamesas cannot hope to ever touch. And neither has shied away from being "spreadsheety." Min/maxing is part of the soul of a hardcoe RPG, and those two have it in spades.


This is something I agree with. Party-management is very difficult in these sort of perspectives. In FPS genres where the "team" is a stand-in for other players, then it works fine, but when the "party" gets more involved... You need a better perspective.


Well, there's still gamesas, who's been releasing prominent RPGs since 1994. Or what's left of them, as some might say. Or, of course, even Arkane Studios, which are technically a sibling to gamesas. That, and their acquisition of the Fallout IP, etc... This is probably why there's a lot of pressure on them to actually make a serious, hardcoe RPG: they are quite literally the heir to the position of making them. It's not that it's by accident, but so much that Zenimax/gamesas intentionally MADE IT SO, by picking up so many of the old guard, in terms of both IP and developers.

I enjoy Bethesda's games but they've been moving in a more action-oriented direction. I guess what I was trying to get it was roleplaying games aren't really dying any more than they have been for the past six, seven years.

And good to see ya, Mr. King, haven't seen you in a while.

Actually I think that RPGs are progressing.
Just look where the genre is now.
It's second in popularity after FPS games.
Some years back it was too many places behind.

There was a time where the most popular genre was Platform games,and at the second place Fighting games,next there where FPS games,then Sports games,and RPGs where near the end,and there where few people playing them.
Today even Super Mario has his own RPG series.. "Paper Mario"

RPGs were most always in second or third place, especially during the 80s and 90s. Now there's barley any RPGs at all. Its blatantly obvious the genre is regressing. Almost to the point were its no longer opinion and pretty much fact. They use to make RPGs like they make FPS now. So many that there was actually a long list to choose from. Now you can count the RPG franchises on your hands. The only genre getting a rawer deal than RPGs, console strategy games. Just because RPGs are becoming mindless action games and trying to appeal to people who dont even like RPGs, doesn't mean the genre is moving forward. If Beth were to go, then there basically wouldnt be any RPGs left.