Dragon Age: Inquisition Review - Monumental
- Thread starter Greg Tito
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Charcharo said:zinho73 said:I understand your point of view, and it is an old discussion on the internet, but you are equating being objective with being quantifiable and you can be objectively critic on several things that are subjectively appreciated.Charcharo said:Unfortunately, art and writing, pacing and even aesthetics art style fall in my book of "subjective" traits. No one has made a formula on how to calculate those, no one has ever made a guide on how to judge such things under ALL circumstances...zinho73 said:
If it cant be put into numbers and be able to judge those numbers objectively, it is subjective.
Graphics are objective. Art style is not.
From my time in World of Tanks, I can also say that what your average gamer finds to be balanced or not... is usually complete and utter bull and should not be used as anything more then toilet paper.
For example, it is my subjective opinion (same as yours) but Bioshock Infinite's storyline was balls. Call of Duty Ghosts has better writing. It made more sense.
I have seen half made mods be better games then Infinite... but hey, subjectivity.
I also seem to find his review useful to people that might have liked DA2. Remember that he is NOT the only reviewer, if you care about someone elses opinion on a game, use Metacritic and check the reviews.
We need one person that loved DA2 for the few or many that liked DA2. The world is not built around you.
Anyways, a perfect review for me is one that focuses completely on the technology in a game and how well implemented it is. Tech overviews, optimization reviews, Nvidia/AMD articles, tech forums and such. Those I can stomach to read.
There is technique in art and in writing.
Internal logic, for example, is a principle in writing that DA 2 breaks when you are a blood mage walking around kirkwall doing all kinds of prohibited stuff without anyone raising an eyebrow. That's objectively awful and bad, the first game walked around more graciously around this issue. You can find it entertaining (I certainly do) but it is in the light of appreciation, not criticism.
There is bad music, bad movies, bad books and bad games. You cannot quantify bad editing, but when the scene stops in the middle of a character phrase or the microphone appears, the professional made a mistake - an objective mistake.
Reusable assets in DA2 are mistakes (Underground hideout being on the mountaintops, for example) caused by lack of skill (because they are obvious and sloppy) or money (because there aren't many of them);
Enormous life bars in combat are mistakes because the intent was to make the combat more difficult - not excruciatingly longer. You can argue that there are people that like it that way and i agree, but it does not make it an achievement, they still got it wrong and most people won't like it.
In Brasil we have an writer called Guimarães Rosa that is brilliant, but not much appreciated, because he is difficult as hell to read with his use of symbolism and metaphor. But weather you like it or not, he IS brilliant. His work is not quantifiable but, although many have tried, nobody to this day could write like him.
When all technique is on the same level all we have left is subjectivity, sure. But being objective is not the same as being quantifiable.
Appreciation is another matter altogether. My daughter do not draw better than Da Vinci, but I like her drawings much more.
Here is the problem here. There are techniques in writing and art styles. TRUE.
But they themselves are subjective.
The same way different writers dont have a single unified style. The same way different characters can be different for ALL people. Some people for example praise the characters from
I have heard people praising Bayonnetta's art style. Good. The game looks bad to me. There is no going around it. Claiming it is good and I am wrong wont win such an argument.
I get what you are saying. People can be objective in your opinion, because you believe things can be "agreed" to. Thing is... that is not how it works. At least the way I see the world cant be ... so easy to qualify
For me a bad movie is one I did not like. Does NOT matter what popular consensus is. At all. If it has 10/10 on IMDB, 99 on metacrtic and 90 Oscar awards, but I do not like it... then it is a bad movie IMO. Of coarse I wont be an ass about it at least, and I might say most people enjoy it. Not going to lie though.
No one on this planet can decide what a "level" is. That is my point.
I am not really saying that quality is derived from consensus (people agreeing upon something), specially on internet forums where no one seems to agree with anything, what I am saying is that regardless of what you think about something, it is possible to evaluate it technically (at least to some extent). More importantly, it is possible to evaluate it inside a context. And even more on topic: if you don't, you can expect some backlash.
Also, an opinion cannot be objective - a criticism (or an informed opinion) must have some objective elements integrated into it.
But, well, OK. Fair discussion.
And the last Dragon Age.greyden said:
Speaking of, I'm still put off the Dragon Age series. I'm reading reviews, but I'm not entirely sure why as I can't imagine being drawn back into the series. And not because of 3 specifically.
Oh right, the reviews by the people that haven't even played through the whole game, the one that if you check on all the consoles there is a guy spamming gibberish as a 0 review, the ones by the people that have had the game for at most 15 hours, and at least 245 of those reviews were done within 11 hours of release, and that's if they live in EST. Those reviews are definitely worth looking into, I'm sure they know all about the game with all those hours they put into in the less than a day they've had with it.NRVNQSR86 said:
Just taking that one pictures as an example. You can certainly claim that you personally don't find Dragon Age 2 ugly, but describing it as gorgeous just because SOME of the textures are high quality is a bit weird. I admit that the Textures aren't bad most of the time, but even looking at your pictures i can easily see several really low res textures, like the frame of the chantry board or the ground before the statues. And you are talking about a game here that was released the same year this game was released. I give you that Dragon Age 2 isn't the ugliest game in existence, even though i despise the art style, but it's most certainly not gorgeous.Nixou said:You don't have to lie you know.
As a matter of fact, I did a bunch of screenshots of my ongoing game, so it's not that hard for me to disprove your rather insulting comment:
He's playing on PC with low or even minimum settings and for some reason it makes the hair look plastic.Hades said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jjNTpmJm_A[/youtube]
Let's not even bring up user reviews. I had some free time, so I decided to see how many of those reviews were trolling or not. As of the time of writing this, it has been less than 24 hours since the game has launched, and most critic reviewers (the ones who actually make a living off of this) say the game takes several days to finish, let alone experiencing the side quests, companions, romances, and other huge aspects that make up the game.NRVNQSR86 said:
There were (as of writing) 196 negative (red) reviews from users on Metacritic, and 18 of them were above 0. That's right, 18 out of 196. There is NO reason to give DAI a 0, it isn't Ride to Hell: Retribution or E.T. So 178 of those reviews can be cut off on principle alone.
Of the remaining 18:
None had reasons for giving scores so low, with two of them outright mentioning that they didn't play more than 12 hours. The rest of the scores hardly mentioned story, instead focusing ONLY on combat, which is a very good sign that they didn't beat the game or even bother trying to look like they put effort into bashing Bioware. One of them had a good reason (game constantly crashing) for reviewing it that low, and that was because for them the game was unplayable.
Going through (skimming) the many positive reviews shows the same - that many of them haven't even bothered pretending they finished the game, either confessing that they didn't or not mentioning the story whatsoever.
So in reality, there has not been near enough time to gauge how the audience actually felt about the game, wait until this weekend (I recommend waiting until Tuesday of next week) to see how people actually feel about the game.
Shiny plastic hair aside, I'm only five hours into the thing and I'm already lovin' it. Nothing like smacking some buffalo-like beasts around with a giant maul just for shits, giggles, and hides.
I might consider that, but for some reason I find the shiny hair a bit endearing. Like everyone just got out of the shower several minutes before talking to you.hentropy said:
Yeah, the hair is atrocious unless you set the Mesh to high. It's like mercury hair.Teoes said:
And, ninja'd by a couple pages worth of people.
Um, I meant, the game is huge and very pretty and will eat up my free time for the foreseeable future. Yeah, that was my post.
Sooo... got the game. On PC.
Haven't had that much time with it yet, but it seems like a fun game.
There are, however, things that drive me nuts:
- The controls are horrendous. Without going into detail, there's not even click to move.
- The "tactical" view is half baked
- The UI of the inventory and skill trees is plain sad
I'm sure I'll enjoy it for what it's worth and hopefully some of the nuisances get patched out, but a 5/5 game this is not.
Haven't had that much time with it yet, but it seems like a fun game.
There are, however, things that drive me nuts:
- The controls are horrendous. Without going into detail, there's not even click to move.
- The "tactical" view is half baked
- The UI of the inventory and skill trees is plain sad
I'm sure I'll enjoy it for what it's worth and hopefully some of the nuisances get patched out, but a 5/5 game this is not.
Uguuu... I cracked and bought this game... hoping that they'd learned from 2 (which I've never seen as a particularly bad game, Sure, it didn't hold a candle, but it's really more of mediocre than bad) and sure, it's a whole league better than two, but yet still inferior to the first in pretty much every way. I'm just going to type out my biggest beefs here.
1. No attribute points. That's all auto, with the exception of certain skills that give say, a +3 to Dex. This one isn't a technical problem, but it really breaks immersion for me. So what if statistically my high intelligence warrior is not as good as the build on the internet tells me to go, I'm roleplaying as a classy british gentleman who can play chess as well as cleave orc ass with a broadsword.
2. Armor is now just a Helmet, and bodypiece. I miss that gratifying feeling of finding 5 legendary armor pieces and matching them together for an armor set bonus.
3. Character specific traits are gone. This was one of the things DA2 did right. Not only did Varric have a completely different tree for his crossbow, but every companion in the game had a set of unique passives, with one activated if you're on friendly terms, and the other if they're rivals. That's gone. Makes me sad =(
and 4, probably the biggest peeve of all.... You don't create your character portrait to go above your life bar. This may seem little, and petty, and yeah. It kinda is, but there is literally no reason to not have it. None. I can see the justification for removing healing spells, or the voiced main character reducing the number of dialogue options, but there is no reason I can't have my avatar's face in the corner of the screen instead of some dumb green handprint.
Other than that, I'm rather liking this game, even if it feels more and more like Medival Effect every addition to the franchise. I'm really liking the weapon and armor creation system though, Pretty much the highlight of the game for me sofar
1. No attribute points. That's all auto, with the exception of certain skills that give say, a +3 to Dex. This one isn't a technical problem, but it really breaks immersion for me. So what if statistically my high intelligence warrior is not as good as the build on the internet tells me to go, I'm roleplaying as a classy british gentleman who can play chess as well as cleave orc ass with a broadsword.
2. Armor is now just a Helmet, and bodypiece. I miss that gratifying feeling of finding 5 legendary armor pieces and matching them together for an armor set bonus.
3. Character specific traits are gone. This was one of the things DA2 did right. Not only did Varric have a completely different tree for his crossbow, but every companion in the game had a set of unique passives, with one activated if you're on friendly terms, and the other if they're rivals. That's gone. Makes me sad =(
and 4, probably the biggest peeve of all.... You don't create your character portrait to go above your life bar. This may seem little, and petty, and yeah. It kinda is, but there is literally no reason to not have it. None. I can see the justification for removing healing spells, or the voiced main character reducing the number of dialogue options, but there is no reason I can't have my avatar's face in the corner of the screen instead of some dumb green handprint.
Other than that, I'm rather liking this game, even if it feels more and more like Medival Effect every addition to the franchise. I'm really liking the weapon and armor creation system though, Pretty much the highlight of the game for me sofar
Sorry Greg, but I'm going to wait for the player's verdict on this one
More accurately, the tactical view on PC looks horrible. I don't think I can deal with it. I was livid at it's removal in DA2 and putting it back in then giving it looney toons controls just makes me think Bioware is trolling the PC crowd at this point.
More accurately, the tactical view on PC looks horrible. I don't think I can deal with it. I was livid at it's removal in DA2 and putting it back in then giving it looney toons controls just makes me think Bioware is trolling the PC crowd at this point.