Critical Miss: Erin Hawke: Explorer

[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.

 

[Dana22]

You are so wrong, its the best RPG of the decade !

 

[AceAngel]

No hamster in second panel.

 

[Mirrorknight]

Bleh. One of the many reasons I sold the game back to the store for half the price 4 days after I bought it. I used the money to get Homefront.

I still think I got the better end of the deal.

 

[duchaked]

took me a while there...

I kept looking back and forth thinking "hey the last panel used a reverse of the bg. is that a purposeful mista-OH"

oddly, I figured this one out much faster when someone posted it on my FB, so my brain isn't completely slow today

Spoiler

 

[Worr Monger]

As a fan of DA2.. this was pretty funny.

Would be one of my biggest complaints. Bioware has reused maps in the past, usually sparingly enough that it didn't bother me.

They went a little too far this time. Hopefully they'll learn.

 

[Seta.br]

Excellent combat gameplay, but otherwise the game feels rushed, and the recycled maps are just one more evidence of that.

 

[Darkauthor81]

Eh, people will love DA:2 after it stops being trendy to hate it.

 

[pwnsore]

Not to be difficult, but this doesn't appear to be Name Game, despite what the home page says.

 

[The Wooster]

And apparently I now write Name Game. Does this mean I now get paid twice as much?

 

[BarbaricGoose]

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.

Have to agree with that.

Frankly, it was a bit of a disappointment all around. There are things I like about the new combat system, but the fact that they did away with the finishers pisses me off so damn much. I feel like they're trying to mimic Mass Effect 2, and in doing so they gave up everything that made Dragon Age unique.

Still a good game. Just not nearly as good as the usual Bioware affair.

 

[DugMachine]

And apparently I now write Name Game. Does this mean I now get paid twice as much?

Just noticed that! Was all excited for an early Name Game and then I got sad when I clicked the link . Not that your comic isn't hilarious though !

 

[Mercsenary]

There is something to be said about the same map over and over again.

"But wait its a new map because the DOORWAY IS BLOCKED! YEah!"

:3

The other part is that sure it was kind of a cool concept to have you stay in the same place seeing how kirkwall slowly changed( your last years lowtown looks a little more prosperous.) But everywhere else, Wounded Coast, Sundermount. All. Looked. The Same.

What I would have liked to see is more NPC fights that is when you wander around at night its not just you vs the 100 mooks that decided to walk around that night but rather, small patrols of guards in sensitive areas like around the chantry and such that would be there.

 

[Crashage]

Oh God,this. A thousand times, this. I hate that bloody cave, for there is only one.

 

[Firia]

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.

I had a chance to talk to one of the devs during pax'10, and one point he raised was pointed out for Origins environments; all the areas were vastly diverse, and they looked stunning, and memorable. But they felt as though they came from different games, different styles, and different themes. I disagreed with that statement personally, but the team wanted to go with a more focused view of the land, so we get a feel for the region Hawk occupies.

That said, it is lazy design to stamp out the same ol' same ol'.