Critical Miss: Erin Hawke: Explorer

[Mamzelle_Kat]

I saw this comic and mentally did a facepalm thinking: ugh.. too bad it's true...

I must say though, I love the game. Over all, I find the characters more interesting and I also really like the city itself. But I'm sooo sick of the Wounded Coast!! Or those underground lairs. Sometimes it makes sense to revisit some areas, like for the Bone Pit mine quest chain, but otherwise.. I'm not happy just revisiting a few places, only with some doors locked.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Yup, that sums my exploration experience aswell.

 

[Sethlad]

So true... so so true.

In an otherwise great game (though I still preffer the old-shcool feel of originis) the repetitiveness of the maps can get reaaaaaaally frustrating.

 

[mireko]

After a while you'd think they'd put up a warning sign or something.

It's also pretty weird how much the templars suck at finding apostates even though there's only one tunnel out of the city.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

This really annoyed me in-game, especially considering how interesting and varied real caves can be visually. Great comic, though.

 

[icyneesan]

Saw this one coming a mile away. Also I just noticed that Erin's name is dangerously close to a certain Nurse/Archer

Erin! Erin! Help me Erin!

 

[Keava]

On the other hand tho, it kinda makes sense once you think about it. Keep in mind you visit those cave sin different years, quite obvious someone else would like to take them after you cleared the previous "owners". Still very annoying.

 

[Zetsubou-Sama]

On the other hand tho, it kinda makes sense once you think about it. Keep in mind you visit those cave sin different years, quite obvious someone else would like to take them after you cleared the previous "owners". Still very annoying.

That would be fine if the same cave on the Wounded coast wasn't exactly the same as the one on Sundermount or even the Bone Pit. The problem is that the room layouts are always the same they just switch around some of the room orders.

 

[TilMorrow]

Look when you kill the people who are renting the property, the estate agents are always going to rent it out to another group of a similar Calibre. Make it easy on yourself and just destroy the whole cave next time. They can't move in if nothing is there.

OT: Reminds me a bit of Mass Effect's 'research/outpost bases with a different name'. Great joke.

 

[Giest4life]

AHAHHAHAHAH! I love that game, but this is so true. By the time I was finding the blood mages, I wasn't even looking at the map for objectives. I just went straight to it.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Wow the rent on those caves must be outrageous.

 

[nagi]

Maybe the Mages and Pirates had the same interior decorater, and he used to live in an old mine. Its not lazy map desine, it's medievil fashon trend!

Speaking of fashion trend, the same thing (copies galore!) applies to clothes. Those fancy ones on the nobles are lucky if they get a color change!

 

[License4Crackhead]

You hit the nail on the head, but what REALLY bugs me in DA2 is that when they 'change areas' by blocking chunks of it off, they still keep the same damn map, which has led me plenty of times down roads which turned out to be blocked. unimpressed bioware, come on, you're better than this.

also, this girl you're are seeing, does she have baggage of the emotional kind?

 

[Ciler]

Reminds me of Mass Effect 1 where 95% of the interior locations were the same 2-3 maps.

 

[Ajna]

Now is that a Rogue Mage, as in a person who has both the talents of a rouge& a mage. Or a rogue Mage as in a Mage who has gone awall?!

-M

AWOL. And it's funnier when you consider that the way mages work in the DA universe, they actually would fit the original definition, instead of the adapted one most people use.

Unless you were joking, in which case... Oops.

 

[Eatbrainz]

Since the game is a story told by Varric, could it be possible that HE'S just uncreative with dungeon designs?

Incidentally, using Varric to lie to NPCs is BEYOND a good idea, Varric is by far the single best improv bulshitter who ever lived.

 

[SomebodyNowhere]

as much as I enjoy the game, when I do a couple quests in a row that send me to identical caves/houses it does take me out of the experience a bit.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

The comic was funny, but it revolves around something that is actually fine when seen from a rational prospective.

As much as I like DA2, it reeks of laziness. They didn't even try to make the maps look at least a little varied.

At least the dialogue is varied enough. It's like they spent all the dev time on the character scripts and about 10 minutes on the maps.

I actually don't see it as lazy; I see it as a look at realism.

Let's just say I make a game about the city I live in and a few of the surrounding areas. Now because I am only making a game about those places, I have a finite amount of space. Things will look similar if you live in the same place for awhile and have traveled the area in that time.

Lets change the cave from the comic into a house that is just outside my city. First when I came to my city, the house was owned by a person that was running a crack house, then a few months later after the guy and the people that stayed there are busted and go to jail, the place is taken over by a violent street gang, it is their base. Then, several months after the gang has been arrested or run off by the police, kids now explore the place on dares and hide there important stuff there.
The house may stay the same, but over time, different people use it.

Now, in Dragon Age 2, each chapter of the game is equal to one or more years in the game's time. If I were to actually spread out each of the first chapter's missions into amounts of time to add up to and equal that year or more for that chapter. Each one would have at least a few weeks. So, I go do a job in a cave, I take care of some raiders in it, then I trek back and get my reward and do other missions. Then later I get another mission to remove mages from the same cave. In the possible game time, a month or more has passed since I removed the raiders from the cave, so why can't mages have found the cave and started using it for themselves.

The place they selected for DA2 is a very small area. The land and places are finite. They do change with the people and items that are in them, but look wise, the only way they are going to change is if BioWare puts in that there was some great earthquake and the cave looks different because some parts have been caved in.

See, all better, a rational look shows that BioWare was actually thinking logically when making the game.

 

[The Wooster]

Now that people mention it I do remember when ME 1 came out and people accused it of the same problem and I defending it as being realistic or some such nonsense. I would like to apologise for my earlier position. It was bullshit then and it continues to be bullshit now.

Maybe for your next strip you should do something with the monster spawn. Dock thugs jumping off roofs like ninjas, or walking into an area to find a spide the size of an elephant appearing out of nowhere to surprise you.

That is a fairly good example of a small thing that has huge, annoying consequences. It undermines the entire combat experience by making tactical positioning and choke points, which should be important absolutely worthless because your mage and archer/swarthy dwarf are going to get ganked by enemies that spawn behind them regardless. At least they hide the spawning with cool but also kind of amusing (Ninjas in plate armour, you're right) animations.

The comic was funny, but it revolves around something that is actually fine when seen from a rational prospective. Etc etc

No honestly it isn't. The areas you explore are not the same area repopulated, that would make sense, as you said. But these are different areas in different zones of the map. The abandoned mine on Sundermount, is the "Cave" in the wounded coast only with different wagons covering the doorways. Sometimes the maps are reversed too, which makes even less sense.

On a side note, it'd be trippin awesome if you actually COULD have a pet hamster with you. I know you had the caged one in ME2, but I mean like a real little hamster riding your shoulders. Not attack or anything just scuttle about you.....

Well there's no Suchong but you could get an ARACHNOMABARI SPIDER DOG [http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/115/1156387/dragon-age-ii-20110318075849887.jpg]

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

On a side note, it'd be trippin awesome if you actually COULD have a pet hamster with you. I know you had the caged one in ME2, but I mean like a real little hamster riding your shoulders. Not attack or anything just scuttle about you.....