Critical Miss: Erin Hawke: Explorer

[Alar]

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 have to agree here. I loved the game, but seeing the same place over and over was annoying. At least with DA:O you had more new areas to explore.

 

[leviadragon99]

Yeah... it's unfortunate the maps are recycled so much... is the rumour about EA being the cause by forcing Bioware to cut corners in the development period true?

 

[Mangue Surfer]

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

The exteriors are worse.
There's a planet with blue mountains and blue sky, a planet with green montains and blue sky, other with blue montains and green sky...

 

[rsvp42]

I love DA2, but this is my only real complaint. But hey, silver lining: making this strip must have been exceedingly easy, right? Now you know how the level designers felt when they didn't have to work overtime every night, leaving their families at home, wondering if they'll ever feel happiness again.

 

[ajofflight]

The caves are essentially copy-pasted from Oblivion. Whooooooop.

 

[Starke]

I know they said streamlined, but this was utterly ridiculous. It might make sense if after some years the places where re-occupied, but bloody hell, there was only 4 damned maps for interior encounters.

Nah, there were at least five or six.

But, seriously, it is hilarious because it's true. I still love the game's writing, which is weird, since I've hated their writing pretty much universally these last few years.

 

[Doug]

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 do get that feeling too re: the maps - though I do love the game so far for its dialog and story, its maps make me sigh.

 

[Canadish]

I know they said streamlined, but this was utterly ridiculous. It might make sense if after some years the places where re-occupied, but bloody hell, there was only 4 damned maps for interior encounters.

Which sounds about the same for Dragon Age: Origins, to be honest. It's not like that was a feast of variety, either.

I've just played both back to back in the last month. Origins really was pretty good for using fresh locations. There were only a couple of copy pasted locations, out of a selection of hundreds. In DA2, there are about 5-6 in total. And just filled with either Spiders/Thugs/Mages/Templars. And then you have to go do them about 7 times each for some pointless side quests which rarely add up to anything.
It was Lazy. It was rushed. It was Dragon Age 2.

 

[Colonel Alzheimer's]

To be fair, it looks like they moved the staircase a bit for the abandoned mine.
EDIT: Wait a minute, it's just a flipped image. In other news, this series is brilliant.

 

[Tiewing]

I kind of enjoyed my first play through and was excited to start another class on a harder difficulty, but only about an hour into it I can't seem to continue. These cookie cutter environments and NPC spawns puts a truly literal feeling of been there done that.

 

[Revenge Revisited]

Heh, this was one of my biggest complaints about this game. It's just lazy. I mean, they really couldn't have made a few more maps? The worst was the one that just went backwards.

P.S. 100th post!

 

[TheEvilCheese]

Reminds me of the oblivion caves/dungeons/forts etc.

All of them made by one guy.

 

[Irridium]

Reminds me of the oblivion caves/dungeons/forts etc.

All of them made by one guy.

At least they had different layouts...

 

[TheEvilCheese]

Reminds me of the oblivion caves/dungeons/forts etc.

All of them made by one guy.

At least they had different layouts...

Somewhat, but there were a fair few areas copied from cave to cave. And you get really confused when rooms are almost impossible to distinguish from the eighteen almost identical ones you've been through in the last hour.

Don't get me wrong, I liked oblivion but the fact that there are more people doing the dungeon layouts in skyrim is great news.

 

[Kilgengoor]

Truth be told, there was a lot of cookie-cutting in Mass Effect, although a lot of the maps where ships, which can be explained by mass production and stuff. I'm going to agree with this comic unlike the other one, it's pretty damn preposterous.

On the other hand...

The caves are essentially copy-pasted from Oblivion. Whooooooop.

Whuh...what?

 

[Valanthe]

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

The exteriors are worse.
There's a planet with blue mountains and blue sky, a planet with green montains and blue sky, other with blue montains and green sky...

True, but at least in Mass Effect the exterior areas were large and varied enough that it wasn't painfully obvious that they were just reskins. And at least they were actually reskinned.

I love Dragon Age 2, it's one of the few games I've managed to be able to play through more than once, however the sheer lack of any variety in the maps is just painful. Once you have finished Act 1, you have seen -every- single different map there is, and for the next two acts you simply revisit the same dozen maps that are supposed to be vastly different locations.

 

[Sedrine]

Anyone else play the game and find it kind of weird that a certain elf squatting in a certain mansion left corpses strewn around in corners for roughly 6 years? Gods, that would smell terrible.

 

[Daft Sikes]

Not that I want to sound like I'm nitpicking, but why is a warrior Hawke wearing Mage champion armor?

 

[Desert Tiger]

Eh. Caught on whether or not I should actually get it.

Does your carried-over saved game from DA1 and Awakening etc actually make that much of an impact on the game?

 

[silasbufu]

Couldn't have said (drawn) this better myself . Also, the Kirkwall areas look mostly the same too.
It's a pitty, I loved the various areas from Origins.