Spot1990 said:
But I liked how it was more about politics and civil unrest than Armageddon.
This is one thing that I find REALLY bad about the story. It is about Armageddon, its just the leadup to it. Much like how HP&tDH pt1 was a lead into the massive battle and be all end all of pt2. Now, if they hadn't thrown in the massive 'cliff hanger' ending, I wouldn't have had a problem with what you said, but the game is the leadup to Armageddon. Still somewhat refreshing, even if the subplots needed to be given more attention (Lets be honest here, the main plot of Hawk becoming the rich pimp of the city ain't that interesting. Put more Arishok in it, more Qunari, more Mage v Templar, EXPAND on those subplots next time Bioware. Please).
DustyDrB said:
Spot1990 said:
Jandau said:
It was inferior to Dragon Age 1 in visuals, writing, plot, characters, gameplay, pretty much every department.
Visuals? How so?
Yeah...visuals? I thought it was well agreed upon that Origins is an ugly game.
I didn't find it too bad. Moving on to Dragon Age 2, however, and my eyes started bleeding. The visuals in that were just... bad. Worse than Skyrim, taking out the points that Skyrim gets for its massive scale and how that affects its visuals. That's just bad.
OT:
Back when I played KotOR, I loved them.
They moved into Mass Effect, and whilst not the same sort of tactical RPG I was used to from them, I enjoyed it a lot. It had depth, an array of abilities to learn and master, and an interesting story - everything that FPS/TPS games were lacking.
Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins came out, and I played them both.
Mass Effect 2 I got to the end of and was like "Wait... What?", confused with how it had already ended, with basically nothing being accomplished. Then I thought about the game, and how it was basically another shooter to add to my list of 'When I want to shoot things' games, though one with a good story thrown one. Most of what I had enjoyed from ME1 was gone, though there were definite improvements (The three armour type (Armour, Barrier, Shield) system for one).
Dragon Age: Origins, however, I loved. Tactical, a large world with a lot of secrets to uncover, combat that had me thinking, a story that engaged me, choices that changed the end game. It was beautiful. There were some flaws I could pick in it, but the rest of the game made me forget them - I could tell that work and TLC had been put into the game.
Dragon Age 2: Comes out, and I am majorly disappointed. Everything that made Origins great was gone. Admittedly, the game had needed a bit of a faster pace, but DA2 took that, stuffed it with steroids, then flushed it down the toilet and handed the remains to me. The game
reaked of a rush job, even more so than KotOR2. The combat design was lazy. Instead of improving on the graphics and style of Origins, they went an entirely different route, and made both worse. The large world became one city and a couple of dungeons. The grand story became a leadup to a bigger one. My decisions from Origins were retconned, and some of my favourite characters destroyed (RIP Anders).
SW:TOR: I didn't get as it was subscription based, and I buy nothing subscription based (I know my luck won't hold out on me twice, and just as my free trial sort of thing for buying the game ends, the game goes F2P [Thankyou Dungeons and Dragons Online]). It sounded like the sort of MMO I'd actually play, though I have heard about a lot of problems - including that some of the environments just don't feel alive. For me, that was one of the things about Bioware environments - they felt alive. If they don't in TOR, then that is yet another aspect of Bioware gone.
ME3: Looks like an improvement on ME2 so far, keeping the best of both, but I'm not certain. The weapons attachments and stats returning is a good sign, as is the better ability system (Better than both ME1 and 2 if it works the way I hope it will). The story will at least have a point - I'll be stopping the Reapers - and so far Mass Effect Dialogue hasn't suffered too badly. Its been somewhat hit or miss at times, but when it its, oh boy does it hit... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXiU6kiq_Ms&feature=related [And that final 'Goodbye' line, after the song, was quite miss]
DA3: Not even announced, so I don't know much about it. Bioware seems to want to take the large open world path though, so they NEED to improve the visuals from DA2, or allow very easy modding so that others can [Texture quality is a real issue here]. They also need to spend a long. LONG.
LONG time developing it. Bethesda spent a good many years working on Skyrim, and Bioware a good many on Dragon Age Origins. I'd expect more than both for the game to impress me. I'd prefer it to lean a LOT more back to DA:O - the tactical combat, talking to your party any time, a proper (If cluttered) inventory - but I feel it is unlikely they will do that. Personally, if they just made the landscape in between each of the places in DA:O, turned the random encounter system into one that worked in real time, and gave me DA:O with those features, SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY. As said, however, I feel they will go the 'Skyrim with good dialogue but more cliché story' route, which will likely result in me doing only one playthrough of it too - if I even buy it.
C&C G2: The studio making this isn't even really Bioware, just another studio renamed to that title. That said, the game is technically a Bioware title because of this. I am hesitantly excited about it. It is using the Frostbite 2 Engine, so if done correctly there might finally be a game with proper destruction on all buildings, not just a health bar (For proper destruction, see Stronghold Legends [Haven't played the others] Wall and to an extent tower destruction). It also means that there is a lot of potential for brilliant graphics. The gameplay I am not sure at all about how it will be, having heard nothing of it, but it may shape up to be a good game.
