I wrote a thread in gaming discussion called "Dragon Age II: The Truth" which covers my thoughts in detail. Of course with 11 views I hardly think many people have been interested.
In short though I think that the problems with "Dragon Age II" are many and myriad, but largely it comes down to it being a sloppily made game, which did away with everything that made the first game popular with the RPG crowd. It didn't just simplify things, which would have been bad enough, it went about it badly.
Understand that in "Origins" you went moving around through a lot of differant areas, and always had something new to see until the end of the game, also the encounters were carefully placed and balanced. In "Dragon Age 2" they have relatively few areas, and have you constantly re-enter the same maps, where they simply spawn massive groups of enemies which keep respawning to attack in waves. In this game you have backalley dregs jumping off roofs like ninjas or literally falling out of the sky to replace their fallen comrades as you battle. What's more, while I'm all for making combat cool, there is such a thing as maintaining an atmosphere. "Dragon Age" had a nice western fantasy vibe, where I felt like I was in one of the "Lord Of the Rings" movies squaring off with the forces of darkness. I have no objection to them speeding it up a bit, but they decided to make the combat the wrong kind of flashy and TOO fast. I feel like I'm in a brainless action Anime, or a kung-fu movie half the time.... not like a sword and sorcery hero. Doing all of these massive acrobatic moves, throwing gas bombs like Batman, and leaving broken bodies scattered around like peanut shells after a binge, while guys leap off roofs to atack over the bodis of their fallen comrades just doesn't work here. It's a differant type of fantasy, and has me oftentimes going "WTF".
People will sit down and say that they didn't dumb the game down but rather "streamlined" it, but the bottom line is a lot of options are missing. Above and beyond arguements about what you could or couldn't customize in the first game, the problem gets down to core gameplay mechanics like picking your party. In "Dragon Age: Origins" I had a real choice of what companions I wanted to use, I could set them up in whatever way I chose to support my main character. I was not saddled by having to use characters I don't like due to a complete lack of options, or having to say "that's a cool character, I like the banter, but I just don't need that skill set". In Dragon Age 2, you have few if any options. There is ONE tank companion, so if your main character is not a tank that means that for a balanced party you have to bring along their sword and shield character. Sure, the friendship/rivalry system gives you some latitude, but at the same time if your playing a criminal or bad guy, it's absolutly ridiculous to be dragging the ultra-strict "captain of the guard" along as your tank. What's more you constantly have to listen to the nagging and disapproval. It just doesn't work. By the same token if your hero isn't a healer, you have exactly ONE healer companion you can use. He's a mage, and not just ANY mage but pretty much the most vocal pro-mage character in the game, AND even goes so far as to write manifestos in the game (seriously)... having this guy glued to your party if your deciding to play Hawke as a Templar and do a pro-templar walkthrough is an absolute joy to listen to. Like the bit with the guard above, the whole question as to WHY you'd be teaming up with him arises, the only answer is "I need a healer, and there isn't anyone else".
It's not some small minority of contrarians attacking this game, it's a matter of the game being a HUGE disappointment compared to the first one for a lot of the players. Honestly I'd go so far as to say that I think the people who are experiencing "Dragon Age Rage" are the majority, it's just that a lot of them (like my father, who doesn't hang out on forums) are silent about it.
Truthfully, from what I've been seeing the professional, paid reviews have been positive. But that highlights a disturbing trend of how tainted by industry dollars they tend to be. Even before the current contreversy, the user ratings of for this game were pretty bloody low, and it's not surprising that you have Bioware sending staffers to try and pad it out, or try and counterbalance the word of mouth.
Let me be honest, people can argue about the streamlined mechanics themselves which is why so many people defending the game talk about that. You cannot however defend them recycling the same maps so much for quests, or the way they are having monsters just pop up, the wave attacks, and guys falling out of the sky (or jumping off rooftops) as they spawn or whatever. That's just horrendous and sloppy game design, and there is no excuse for it.
What's more even the quality of the much-lauded writing is debtable, because partof what made the first "Dragon Age" cool was that it used Bioware's typical techniques to give the illusion of making desicians. You could decide which factions to pursue first, or leave a given quest chain if your getting annoyed and go play around somewhere else for a while if you wanted to. "Dragon Age 2" in comparison has far less enviroments and versatility of activities and settings, and is also very linear. I suppose it does prevent casual gamers for getting lost, but it's also very noticible when your handed a bunch of main plot quests that have to be completed in a very specific order to progress the story. You can't prioritize things, or come up with an entire campaign strategy. The only real variance you have is the side quests and secondary quests, and they also just involve selecting the quest, going to the right map (which you've already visited for other quests usually.. there are exceptions) and then killing some arbitrary spawn of more or less identical looking guys who respawn constantly until you've killed enough of them.
... also
I was critical of Bioware for their entire stunt with asking the community if we agreed with a design desician... giving people a heavily predetermined protaganist (ie Hawke), getting a negative response, and then acting like it was a positive one and going ahead with it anyway. I think this says a lot for their current mentality, and their tendency to want to try and create the reception that they want. It's pretty sad, but honestly them trying to load the metacritic scores for advertising purposes as opposed to letting them game succeed on it's own merits does not surprise me.
I also think Bioware is paying the price for being idiots with "Mass Effect". I'll be blunt in saying that a LOT of people were unhappy with the way they turned "Mass Effect 2" into a shooter with it's RPG elements stripped away to almost non-existance. The game sold well, but that was mostly due to the positive reception of the first game. Bioware dismissed the complaints, and chose to only listen to the people who praised their design desicians, assuming that those who were upset were a tiny minority of contrarians and probably looking at the sales figures to reinforce their attitudes without bothering to consider that most of those sales occured (like happens frequently with video games) before anyone had seen the game or real word of mouth had gotten out there.
By creating their own reality and ignoring the criticism, I think Bioware figured it was okay to make a sloppy and dumbed down game for "Dragon Age 2" because they think it worked with "Mass Effect 2". I honestly think they are going to be in for a BIG surprise with Mass Effect 3 and it's reception if they don't put in the time to develop it as a proper RPG because I think they lost a lot of "brownie points" with "Dragon Age 2", especially from people who dismissed the Mass Effect thing by saying "well, at least us real RPG gamers have Dragon Age".
Basically, nobody should have been surprised that this game isn't exactly overflowing with critical praise from the actual consumers. A lot of people saw this coming. Heck, read some of my messages over the last six months (A lot of them have probably been archived). I wanted to see "Dragon Age 2" prove me wrong and succeed, but I suspected this was going to be how things would turn out.
Hopefully Bioware will prove me wrong, but I'm saying right now that if "Mass Effect 3" is more like the second game than the first one, the results are going to be even worse than what your seeing here.
The best move Bioware could make right now is to start ensuring "Mass Effect 3" is going to be a very deep RPG experience (in mechanics, not just story) even if that means pushing it up, and to make a BIG deal about promoting it that way. A professional company can't really come out and say "wow, we F@cked up guys, we're sorry", especially not thise close after a release, but that's the sentiment they need to embrace in their actions.
I'll also be honest in saying that I don't think it's all 100% Bioware's fault, other than them joining with EA to begin with. Simply put they are currently assigned to multiple projects. Their success was originally because they were a relatively small group of developrs who worked on one project at a time, and insisted (like Blizzard) in taking as long as they needed to get the game done right. Under their current management they have increased staff (and that means it's not as elite as it once was), and are expected to keep three balls in the air at once (at least). Rather than focusing soley on say "Mass Effect 2" or "Dragon Age 2" they have their attention divided by simultaneously developing those franchises. What's more they have that huge "Old Republic Online" game in the pipe, and due to the massive price tag the investors doubtlessly demand that it takes most of their best people and attention, no matter whose name actually shows up on one project. I think what we're seeing is that like a lot of companies, Bioware can't operate at their old level under
these conditions.
In short, I think that overall the problem is that "Dragon Age 2" is just a flat out sloppy game. It still shows some of the glow that made Bioware in areas, I mean they aren't dead or anything, but it's just not what we'd expect from the company, or what they would likely have turned out if they had ALL of their resources and best people focused on that one project until they were satisfied with what they were turning out.
Such are my thoughts, thank you for those who read this far (whether you agree with me or not). I take the time to express my thoughts, and I know a lot of people gloss over them due to me saying too much or going into too much detail. I appreciate people taking the time to read what I write.
