Dragon Age II: EA boogaloo

[TV-366]

Apropos of nothing related to the conversations above (but they're definitely interesting ones!) I wanted to answer SFDebris' question about Monty apparently saying "Herring" in Episode 6. I don't know if you actually knew the answer and were just making jokes, but he's almost certainly saying "Heroine" in the cheesiest French accent you can muster. "Herring" makes for a much funnier interpretation, though.

I'm so sorry this game's been such a struggle for you to complete, both with the various bugs and with what sounds like really lackluster story and gameplay. Your efforts have not been in vain, though; I've found them both informative and amusing by turns. Your drunk Flemeth cracks me up every time.

[Fixer]

Weird.

KNIGHTS OF THE FALLEN EMPIRE is easily the best of KOTOR and what it should have been done from the beginning.

KotFE had a great setup in the first 9 chapters.
The art design, Emperor Valkorion, world building, music. All excellent.

It had serious problems with Chapters 10 to 16.
When you should have been the Alliance Commander, what really happened was that you were Alliance recruitment agent. You were sent out on missions to pick up new NPCs and were seconded to them during that episode to show off how awesome they were. In Chapter 11 you get a trooper companion taking over and telling you how everything is done despite your attempts to choose differently.
Compound that with the story choice being locked to a Jedi mindset. If you tried to make a dark side choice, it would do either nothing meaningful, end in the same result as the light side choice, or punish you for it.

If you were roleplaying a Sith, the end point result of Chapter 16 KotFE was the game figuratively backhanding you yelling "WRONG!" for not picking the correct Jedi choice, as you stood about feeling impotent, outmanoeuvred by everyone, standing in the shadow of other people's victories. Then everyone softly applauds and congratulates you on your participation.

Part of this was down to to resources. Some of it was a seriously bad set of design decisions. For some reason they decided to render the choices that should have significant outcomes in chapter 16 meaningless, to have choices that had actual diverging outcomes in the 9 chapters of KotET.

[CharlesPhipps]

I will say I think Chuck made one big mistake about Act II.

The vast majority of games have the players be essentially aimless drifters who have no particular reason to stay in any one location and can just pick up roots like the Fugitive or the Hulk to move to the next town. However, by the time of Act II, Hawke is the owner of a mine in Kirkwall as well as his family estate. I think Hawke's mother dying should have been restricted to Act III but he's still got his family there (sadly, that's Gamlin, ugh) with Bethany as someone he might want to be nearby if she does ever want to leave. Indeed, it was a big missed opportunity to not have Bethany along for the ride in Mark of the Assassin.

In short, Hawke can't just leave Mos Eisley...err, I mean Kirkwall.

[Wargriffin]

Weird.

KNIGHTS OF THE FALLEN EMPIRE is easily the best of KOTOR and what it should have been done from the beginning.

KotFE had a great setup in the first 9 chapters.
The art design, Emperor Valkorion, world building, music. All excellent.

It had serious problems with Chapters 10 to 16.
When you should have been the Alliance Commander, what really happened was that you were Alliance recruitment agent. You were sent out on missions to pick up new NPCs and were seconded to them during that episode to show off how awesome they were. In Chapter 11 you get a trooper companion taking over and telling you how everything is done despite your attempts to choose differently.
Compound that with the story choice being locked to a Jedi mindset. If you tried to make a dark side choice, it would do either nothing meaningful, end in the same result as the light side choice, or punish you for it.

If you were roleplaying a Sith, the end point result of Chapter 16 KotFE was the game figuratively backhanding you yelling "WRONG!" for not picking the correct Jedi choice, as you stood about feeling impotent, outmanoeuvred by everyone, standing in the shadow of other people's victories. Then everyone softly applauds and congratulates you on your participation.

Part of this was down to to resources. Some of it was a seriously bad set of design decisions. For some reason they decided to render the choices that should have significant outcomes in chapter 16 meaningless, to have choices that had actual diverging outcomes in the 9 chapters of KotET.

BW's ambition is like the Snake eating its own tail

Knights falls apart when the idea of merging all the Character paths into one... doesn't work cause despite their ambition the writers aren't skilled enough to pull it off or simply put it can't be pulled off. especially now they are trying to spilt it back to two sides and effectively starts punishing you for picking sides namely the Not Republic side or worse trying not to have it fall apart

Knights has very clearly favored the Jedi class stories over the others, Hell to an extent its almost why all the BIG companion reintroduction have been for all the other classes companions.

______
I think one problem Chuck brings up is kinda telling of BW's descent into being formulaic.

Its when he is talking about Tallis and BW has this bad habit of making the choices either "Let them go/Let them get away with it or Kill them"

Not put them in their place or get an apology out of them or tell them to piss off the relationships over... its If you don't like them get rid of them PERNAMENTLY muhahahaha

Which is kind of a fucked up mentality to promote

[AlucardNoir]

In other words people let their expectations reach impossible levels that even if the game HAD been the best thing ever (which to be fair it wasn't) it wouldn't have been able to reach?

Not at all. When ME1 came out it was a good game. When ME2 came out it was a good game made great by the fact that your choices from the first game mattered. By making little, insignificant choices from the first game matter in the second the second wasn't just a thematic or story continuation of the original, it was your personalized continuation. It continued your story from the first game. ME3 did the same thing... until the very end when you were given 3 choices that were basically the same from the players point of view: all previous choices don't matter, this is the only meaningful choice in all 3 games and the rest were meaningless, CHOOSE ONE.

ME:A was a decent game but it wasn't a "BioWare game". It didn't make you feel like you were in the ME universe. it didn't make you feel like you were in a BioWare story. The gameplay was full of padding - just like DA:I, sigh - it lacked meaningful choices, it lacked engaging characters, it lacked all the small story elements that made BioWare games feel lived in. Oh, it had an open world, one that made Bethesda's open worlds look brilliant by comparison. It had gameplay elements, that felt like padding for the main story line and who made sure you couldn't suspend your disbelief, that made sure you knew at all times that you were playing a game, as opposed to engaging with a story.

To put it bluntly it was a "game with story elements" as opposed to a "story driven game". It was an RPG video game as opposed to a BioWare RPG. People knew what they wanted, they wanted another KOTOR, another ME, another DA:O, we didn't even get another DAII or DA:I. DAII is a fairly maligned game, but even with it's on rails story it still more memorable then ME:A and that's a bad thing. Before the ending of ME3 the ME series was the series to recommend to SF fans that weren't into gaming. It was the series that you could use to try and convince people that Video Games weren't just for kids (and I don't mean because it had nudity and violence but because of it's story). ME:A doesn't add anything meaningful to the conversation. It's just another time waster with the thin veneer of a B movie story.

WoW has two kind of servers, roll play servers for the people interested in the WoW story and the far more popular gameplay servers most everybody else uses. WoW can be played as an RPG or it can be played as a time waster. It can be played for it's story or it can be played for the game mechanics. BioWare RPG's used to be single player story driven games. That's what people expected from their games. That's what DA:I and ME:A didn't deliver DAII made sure there were no major choices you could make, ME3 made sure all previous choices wouldn't matter, DA:I was full of fluff that would eventually tire you of the game on the one hand and full of real time mechanics that made sure you would have to end up treating the game like a job more then a recreational activity. ME:A was not a story driven game. The story of ME:A is as important to it's gameplay as the story of Azeroth is to the people that just play WoW for raids or PvP. And let's not even get into SWTOR, who despite being story driven has to lock the story behind meaningless MMO activities that are needed to keep you playing and paying.

After ME3 people had relatively low expectations for another ME game but they still knew what a BioWare ME game was. They had 3 games that told them how the game was going to play out. Then ME:A came out and it emphasized everything that wasn't of interest to the core audience of BioWare games while downplaying and underdeveloping the story that players expected to be front and center.

People didn't have impossible expectations for ME:A, they had realistic expectations formed as a result of having played ME, ME2 and ME3 as well as other BioWare games. They expected another BioWare game. They got another EA game.

[hammerofglass]

Knights falls apart when the idea of merging all the Character paths into one... doesn't work cause despite their ambition the writers aren't skilled enough to pull it off or simply put it can't be pulled off. especially now they are trying to spilt it back to two sides and effectively starts punishing you for picking sides namely the Not Republic side or worse trying not to have it fall apart

Knights has very clearly favored the Jedi class stories over the others, Hell to an extent its almost why all the BIG companion reintroduction have been for all the other classes companions.

There's a pretty solid Imperial bias, too. Almost all of the returning characters that actually do anything after recruitment are from Imperial classes, and all but one of the returning love interests are. Hell, the Republic itself sits out the entire war while the Sith and Mandelorians throw in with the Alliance.

[Gridlock]

In the end from what little we know about the behind the scenes of ME:3 ME:A and DA:2 and maybe DA:I
One of their main problem was that they where either rushed through development or a lot of their development was aimless.
DA:2 and ME:3 where both rushed to meet a deadline and as such wasn´t finished when they launched, meaning the ALOT of corners where cut.
With DA:2 it was the reuse of environment and a lackluster story.
With ME:3 Alot of the events was set on a timer or counter, at the start where you are waiting for the Normandy to arrive, you don´t NEED to kill any of husks coming at you, just fire into the ground a certain amount of times and it will arrive.
When you are chased by a reaper in your car, you don´t have to fire a single shoot, you will still succeed.
At earth when you are defending your camp, a certain amount of husks needs to run towards the camp, before the event is completed again no need to fire a single shot they will never overrun the camp.
Also pure story wise it´s not only the ending that ignores your choices, you will also find that alot of the game does.
Killed the Ragnai Queen in ME:1? Doesn´t matter you will still meet one in this game.
Killed Tank in ME:2 doesn´t matter you will still go on the same mission where you would meet him.

Some defenders of this has said that the game would be too massive if you where to include all the choices of the previous game.
But honestly i think that´s complete and utter bullshit, the game is based on events and it is quite easy to write those events in different versions depending on your choices and often it won´t have to be all that difficult.

Also with both ME:3 and DA:I a lot of resources and development time, seems to have been put into the multiplayer aspect of the game that EA was pushing for Bioware to include.

DA:I i suspect may have been the victim of the same fate as ME:A in that of those years it was in development, it had no real goal or direction, so while both games might have been in "development" for several years, the actual development might only have been for a year or so before it was pushed out to meet a deadline.
Hence why ALOT of DA:I is filled with needless padding, that contributes very little to the story or the game.

[PaladinWolf]

DAI and ME3/MEA has opposite failing in my opinion. I overall enjoyed the story of DAI, but it’s gameplay was let down by the amount of busywork. ME3 and MEA on the other hand had very enjoyable gameplay, but were let down by their stories.

[Asvarduil]

DAI and ME3/MEA has opposite failing in my opinion. I overall enjoyed the story of DAI, but it’s gameplay was let down by the amount of busywork. ME3 and MEA on the other hand had very enjoyable gameplay, but were let down by their stories.

I can agree with this. DA: I is sort of like Star Trek: First Contact. There's a lot of really dumb stuff in it, but it ultimately is an enjoyable work of fiction (though, Sera's contribution - the bee, and later 'bees and wasp' grenades are enjoyable. Actually, scratch that - Sera is enjoyable). ME3 and MEA are sort of like Final Fantasy V: they're good games, but rather sucky stories.

[Nevix]

"He gives a speech, the Arishock not the Viscount"...

You know, Dragon Age is just messed up enough that I could see the Viscount being a secret lich and making a speech as just a head, and then needing to be killed. Again.

Also worth noting: I greatly enjoy the video game reviews. They are a LOT of fun to watch, and I am happy to see them when they come out.