danpascooch said:
I haven't had the chance to pick up my preorder of Dragon Age II yet, I plan on getting it later today, but I did look up some reviews, and while critics seem to love it, it has a user score of 3.4 on Metacritic.
Now I'm worried, the Metacritic user score is 3.4, which is so bad it's usually reserved for one of two cases:
1.) They did something specific to cause rage that results in spams of unfairly biased reviews (such as Modern Warfare 2's drop of dedicated servers)
2.) Only a few people reviewed it so far, and of them is an ass.
Well, 178 people rated the game, so it's not #2, and they aren't complaining about a specific nerd rage or single facet that caused hate (don't jump down my throat about my comment on MW2, it was just an example, I know dedicated servers are important but the majority of Metacritic user reviews about them read as if the change from dedicated servers murdered their parents), they are making broad statements about it being linear and bland. This does not bode well.
Does anyone have any explanation for this? Is the game really just crappy? I know Metacritic has some quirks but please don't just post saying Metacritic has no grounding in reality, 200 people don't just wake up and say "hey guys! You know what would be funny? If we all collectively pretended this particular game was terrible!"
I haven't checked the metacritic ratings, but the news doesn't terribly surprise me. I also suspect that as time goes on we're liable to see more of this. One of the big reasons is that professional reviewers mostly act as an advertising source nowadays. EA/Bioware has a lot of money invested in this, and as a result they probably bought a lot of reviewers, assuring a high metacritic score from professional sources. There have been contreversies over this kind of thing, so it's not like people can pretend it isn't happening.
*IF* the discrepency is as described, I very much doubt it was caused by a handfull of trolls as the guys compiling the information tend to keep an eye on things like that nowadays due to the antics of various groups over the years.
As for why "Dragon Age 2" might be getting bad reviews, well understand that they DID dumb the game down considerably and it's no longer a hardcore RPG for the people who love stats, gear optimization, and similar things. It's also a shorter game, the voice acting and dialogue doesn't quite match the standards of it's predessesor , and of course there was the whole stunt Bioware pulled by handing people a pre-defined character as opposed to one a player could fully build themselves. What they did was ask the general populance if people liked that idea, got a resounding "no" from the majority of sources, and then decided to go ahead with it anyway and pretend they got a positive response. To say that this pissed people off would be an understatement.
Understand that Bioware made the design desicians it did in order to (hopefully) cater to a larger group of players. Dumbing the game down and so on, was done to make it more approchable. As a result there are going to be a decent number of people who like what they did, and approve of it. On the other hand the original core of players who lionized "Dragon Age" to begin with for being a fairly hard core RPG experience, as opposed to a title designed to cater to the mainstream exclusively, are understandably unhappy about it.
We're looking at the entire "Mass Effect 2" situation again. Remember though that one of the big defenses made of turning "Mass Effect 2" into a glorified shooter was that Bioware still had "Dragon Age" as a series for serious RPG gamers. This is no longer the case.
I'll also be blunt in saying that this reaction, if accurate, shouldn't surprise anyone. Anyone who has been keeping an ear to the ground, as opposed to simply paying attention to those they agree with, would probably have caught the rumbles over the "Mass Effect 2" thing, and understand that while outnumbered by the mainstream or "casual" gamers, the more serious RPG gamers are NOT a tiny group, having been one of the biggest gaming markets for most of the time gamig has been around, and arguably THE sweet spot for making money before the fairly recent mainstream boom.
As a lot of people had been saying, "Mass Effect 2" sold due to the popularity and inertia from the first game. A lot of people got upset when they actually plugged in the game and saw what Bioware did to it. At this point however the game had already undergone massive sales. A lot of those same people made it quite clear they had become wary of Bioware and wouldn't be supporting them if this continued.
What we're seeing now is Bioware pulling the same basic thing with "Dragon Age", and well, it's not pretty since the consumers themselves can't be bought and controlled. I don't think we'll see how serious this is until "Mass Effect 3" at the end of the year and perhaps with "Dragon Age 3" should one be made.
This is just my opinion and observations of course.
Understand that just because a lot of people belittle the millions who didn't like the changes made to things like the "Mass Effect" series, or think it was an evolution, does not mean those people disappeared, changed their minds, or were wrong. Like it or not Bioware has POed a substantial amount of their customer base and there are going to be shockwaves irregardless of whether you (or anyone else) agrees with the changes.
As I write this, my household purchused multiple copies of DA2. My copy is still en-route from Amazon (due to some kind of screw up on their part). My father and stepmother have gotten their copies... and yes, I do think that the game is lacking in terms of gameplay and even the script/dialogue despite Hawke speaking. It has however improved in terms of graphics quality, and the combat animations themselves.
Also I do not think that there has been any major conflict between Console and PC gamers here. Or at least none from so called "PC elitists", that seems to be people projecting. The game seems to be perfectly playable both ways. Also the platform has little to do with the kinds of problems that have apparently been plagueing the metacritic rating.
Now if you want to see what a REAL battle between PC and Console gamers is like, check out some of the initial traffic going on with "DC Universe Online" and how messed up the PC user interface is, due to them not wanting to change it majorly from the way it worked on consoles.
At any rate, we'll see what happens in the long run, perhaps I'm wrong, but I think Bioware is going to be hit by some serious shockwaves come it's next single player releases.
I'll also be blunt in saying that Bioware was originally successful due to the way they focused on each other their games, one at a time. I think that some of the things that are annoying people were not done just to cater to a wider audience, but also because the games were easier to do this way. Remembr, Bioware has greatly expanded in size and has a lot more people (not all of whom are going to have the original quality) and it's working on multiple projects simultaneously. Rather than one game at a time, they are working on "Dragon Age", "Mass Effect", and most notably "Old Republic Online" all at once. With the 300+ million dollars invested in Old Republic Online (the most expensive game EA has ever made) I think their best people are pretty much tied to that project by demand of the investors, and I think the last couple of games they have done (Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age 2) have reflected this. Not an opinion you hear too often, but I think it's a factor that applies as much (if not more so) than them trying to cater to a more casual audience.
