Dragon Age : Origins - An utter disappointment ?

[Mathak]

I'm rather conflicted about DA:O.

On one hand, you could see most plot twists coming a mile away (ghee, hello there greasy-haired, dark armoured, short-tempered general...might you perhaps be planning to betray everyone within, say, the nex 5 minutes?). On top of that the combat made me want to eat my keyboard (Orzammar...i have to fight my way through HOW many darkspawn-filled tunnels?) even with a mage.

On the other hand, I really liked the far greater freedom it offered compared to ME. All the different choices and characters really allow you to personalise the story. Personally, I found the story of my female arcane warrior mage who helped people as much as she could, fell in love with Alistair, put Alistair on the throne married to Anora to ensure maximum stability and then, broken hearted, sacrificed herself to kill the Archdemon totally fucking epic.

So...in potential Bioware's best game, but messed up by game mechanics and overall script. If for DA:O2 they'd redesigned the combat and story instead of the whole total-freedom thing it'd no doubt get into my top-10-games-ever.

 

[WelshDanny]

Am I the only one who didn't have a problem with the graphics?

The kids of today, YOU DON'T KNOW YOU'RE BORN!

 

[Starke]

maybe it's not yo' "thang"

I say you play a bit more. You can't really judge the whole game until you finished it.

Well... no offense, but that's flat out bullshit. DAO is 100 hours long (give or take), so, while I haven't finished it I've certainly played enough of it to accurately judge it.

The irony here is in under an hour you can determine that a game isn't worth playing. Its if you're trying to determine that it IS worth playing where that's a legitimate argument.

 

[Starke]

Am I the only one who didn't have a problem with the graphics?

The kids of today, YOU DON'T KNOW YOU'RE BORN!

The graphics themselves? Not really. The art direction was highly derivative, and made me want to bleed from my eyes. But the engine just looked outdated not bad.

 

[SpireOfFire]

i just now realized they have you select your characters voice and you have literally NO DIALOGUE except for a few very annoying in battle taunts.

i mean really "can i get you a ladder so you can get off my back?" i've heard that enough to make me want to plant a bomb in my own head.

 

[MechaBlue]

I liked it as much as Mass Effect, because they were pretty much the exact same plot for two different genres. I also liked the dialogue system because you couldn't figure out the good and bad choices simply by their placement on the wheel.

However, Dragon Age was far from a perfect game. There were combat issues, enough glitches to shake a stick at, the world was a Frankenstein World stitched together from ideas from all across the genre (though the same goes for Mass Effect), and some of the costume design was just. Plain. Fugly. The graphics themselves I didn't mind at all.

I liked it, but I don't hold it against people who didn't like it. However, I will still hold it against people who want to pretend that there is a huge difference between it and Mass Effect.

 

[SpireOfFire]

maybe it's not yo' "thang"

I say you play a bit more. You can't really judge the whole game until you finished it.

Well... no offense, but that's flat out bullshit. DAO is 100 hours long (give or take), so, while I haven't finished it I've certainly played enough of it to accurately judge it.

The irony here is in under an hour you can determine that a game isn't worth playing. Its if you're trying to determine that it IS worth playing where that's a legitimate argument.

completely irrelevant: i love ur avatar. cybernetic augmentation from fallout 2? good stuff, bro.

 

[Starke]

However, I will still hold it against people who want to pretend that there is a huge difference between it and Mass Effect.

Mass Effect was a third person shooter disguised as an RPG with a cheesy plot. Dragon Age was an Isometric RPG with horrifically bad writing. I don't really see the similarities...

 

[_Cake_]

I loved Dragon Age, mostly cause of the story and characters but I also love sandbox style RPGs as well.

To me the gameplay felt nothing like WOW and I disliked the mass effect conversation wheel. Especially with the good answer on top the neutral in the middle and bad on the bottom, then you have people just picking the top or bottom always cause they need the paragon/renegade points. I had no problems with the graphics, but that's not what makes or breaks a game for me.

woah, woah, sandbox? it felt very linear to me, I mean yes the beginnings and endings are different, but the core is the same. Sandbox RPG implies you can tackle every situation from any way, I never felt that freedom in DA

You can choose where/when you go, a lot of your companions, talk or fight your way through it, pick who you side with, who you romance, and your side quests... that's sandbox IMO. If you didn't enjoy the game like I did sorry.

 

[MechaBlue]

Mass Effect was a third person shooter disguised as an RPG with a cheesy plot. Dragon Age was an Isometric RPG with horrifically bad writing. I don't really see the similarities...

Spoiler

So, you have a background, but it's not important for more than one or two missions. Then you get recruited into the military. Something goes horribly wrong when Someone betrays the government and you become the super special leader who is the only one of your kind of a ragtag team in order to stop them. One of them will be the warrior dude, one will be the young guy who makes dry comments and one will be the sweet, meek bisexial girl who is trying to deny something. You go through three major missions with lots of side quests and wind up confronting Bad Guy. Somewhere around here at least one person who has the potential to be in your party will die. Then you wade through a bunch of minions to kill the Big Bad that has threatened the world countless times and are a big hero. Then you get to choose who's in charge of the government.

Your choices in classes are the damage guy, the dude with super powers and the guy who can open those damn chests/lockers. You choices in dialogue are to threaten bodily harm on everything that moves, offer help in every situation or to ignore everything. There will also be an option to make yourself more persuasive to get some of the most hilarious dialogue in the game.

EDIT: Added a few.

 

[DVS Storm]

Well I agree with you in a way with EA being a soul-sucking megacorporation. But I mean it ain't as bad as Activision imo. Ea have really stepped up. And you can't say that a game is bad if the publisher is. Mass Effect is fucking awesome and that is an EA game too. Bioware made these games and Bioware is my favorite game studio. I love Dargon Age. It isn't perfect but it's really good fun.

 

[DustyDrB]

I loved that game, and still do! It is easy to see why people wouldn't though

That's how I feel. We need not be so dogmatic about our opinions of games.

 

[No_Remainders]

Oh, whine more about graphics please.

Who cares about graphics? They're not important. Deus Ex is still one of the best games ever made and Crysis is still not that good.

It was fun. The combat system worked well and I liked how I could make my people do things.

Dragon Age was a new, full priced game so yes, graphics matter. If you were buying an XBLA game for $10 then graphics wouldn't matter so much.

That said, I thought the graphics were decent. The combat was boring as all hell though and the gambit system didn't work very well.

I didn't mind the graphics. It looked quite nice on my 1680x1050 monitor on my xbox.
Even still, I don't care about graphics. Gameplay trumps graphics any day.

 

[No_Remainders]

Gameplay does trump graphics but that doesn't mean graphics don't matter. They matter alot when the game is $60 ($50 for the PC).

It's not as though they were THAT bad though.

 

[No_Remainders]

Gameplay does trump graphics but that doesn't mean graphics don't matter. They matter alot when the game is $60 ($50 for the PC).

It's not as though they were THAT bad though.

They weren't that bad but they weren't worth the price tag either compared to other $50-60 games. Hell, aside from the horrible character models, I though Oblivion looked better at 1920 x 1080 than Dragon Age did and Oblivion GOTY was only $20 at the same time the DA was $50 (PC).

Except that Oblivion was boring and the combat system was pure awful.
I wouldn't have minded Oblivion if I was actually able to enjoy the scenery. It was just the same plot of land copied + pasted again and again and again with a city here and an abandoned mine/castle there.

 

[psivamp]

The thing that pissed me off most about DA, was that you couldn't open doors during combat. I say this because there was a fight in some building where you had to range attack a pair of guys but I only had melee characters alive. So, I had to reload an autosave because my characters couldn't vault a table that was being used as a barricade or bash a door while under fire.

I beat the original installment, but it didn't impress me.

 

[JuryNelson]

I liked it because the story was great. The Moralesque Decisions were more complex than "Kill the tiny baby and take all his money or don't?" I liked how it hinged more on character approval than goodness or evilness. I liked how that impacted my party choice more than a given character's usefulness.

But at every point when I am not talking to something or reading a codex or looking at a unique and interestingly designed dungeon or enemy (Seriously? Can we please as a culture stop complaining about graphics when they are MERELY stunning?), I admit I was bored. The combat felt like a chore, specifically when the part of the game usually considered "downtime" was such a treat.

But yeah. Fine. Sometimes games that are popular or successful are also terrible and you're the only one who sees the truth.

 

[DarkPanda XIII]

I guess for me it was the very few bits and pieces that made me enjoy it..listening to your trio of fellows behind you converse while your walking along has been a lot of fun for me, Listening to Alistair's rants made me laugh (until the dramatic parts were thrown on his lap). And watching a few kewl situations during a fight is kewl (like my mage managed to freeze a giant Ogre, and Alistair rammed into him, causing him to shatter.)

But yeah, it's such a large hype for such a limited amount of space. The dungeons were wayy too long and I often ran out of everything way too quickly. Much of the opponents were a wee bit too hard to face without having to put a few potions on them unless you had an area effect spell, the fact that you pretty much will be garunteed to lose at least one person from your group every time (Everyone in my group is happy enough save for Zevron, and I keep losing him to.well..that one time when he can turn his back to you). And there's really only FOUR main missions, with a dozen sidequests that don't feel really attached, and don't give you as good enough stuff as one thinks. (Would love to have won over the Crimson Oars, and have them charge into battle screaming "Yarr").

So really, it's...dumbed down, which of course it is since I played the Xbox, but still, with only the two expansions that didn't really feel like it was attached to the others and with a lot of problems with conversations (I can't make friendly conversation with anybody without making it lewd or suggest we're just friend). ...yeah, I'm weird...

But all in all, not really as worth it as people think.

 

[JuryNelson]

Mass Effect was a third person shooter disguised as an RPG with a cheesy plot. Dragon Age was an Isometric RPG with horrifically bad writing. I don't really see the similarities...

Spoiler

So, you have a background, but it's not important for more than one or two missions. Then you get recruited into the military. Something goes horribly wrong when Someone betrays the government and you become the super special leader who is the only one of your kind of a ragtag team in order to stop them. One of them will be the warrior dude, one will be the young guy who makes dry comments and one will be the sweet, meek bisexial girl who is trying to deny something. You go through three major missions with lots of side quests and wind up confronting Bad Guy. Somewhere around here at least one person who has the potential to be in your party will die. Then you wade through a bunch of minions to kill the Big Bad that has threatened the world countless times and are a big hero. Then you get to choose who's in charge of the government.

Your choices in classes are the damage guy, the dude with super powers and the guy who can open those damn chests/lockers. You choices in dialogue are to threaten bodily harm on everything that moves, offer help in every situation or to ignore everything. There will also be an option to make yourself more persuasive to get some of the most hilarious dialogue in the game.

EDIT: Added a few.

This really needs to stop being a problem. Or at least stop being surprising.

Stories are stories, and successful stories are successful stories and just because the structure is the same doesn't mean they're not excellent and unique.

Do any research about Shakespeare and you'll learn that he didn't "Write" any of his plays, in the contemporary sense of the verb. The stories were adaptations, down to a one. But you can still go to college and specialize in Shakespeare.

Point is: Don't act all bored just because every moment of your life doesn't revolutionize everything.

 

[DustyDrB]

I loved that game, and still do! It is easy to see why people wouldn't though

That's how I feel. We need not be so dogmatic about our opinions of games.

Then why are we here? To discuss the weather?

Well, the weather here is downright wonderful.

It's fine to discuss games. But notice the word "dogmatic". I played the game and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I can't expect to force my opinion on everyone. Neither should you. That's the beauty of individual differences.