Why the Dragon Age 2 hate is GOOD

[Eclectic Dreck]

maybe....

But, and with respect to your opinion, you're making assumptions here (you're not a developer?). I doubt there is any more overhead in making a sequel in the Dragon age engine than there was in the baldurs gate engine. ONce you have the engine there after all its just more story, more dialogue, more art, maybe more cut scenes. yes the presentation has stepped up a notch but so have the tools and the developers and the budgets... Smells of poor excuse to me.

The engine is an engineering problem. You'll note that, whenever the credits roll in any AAA game you care to find that the number of engineers and programmers is rather small compared to the dozens of people working in various capacities as "artists". It is the content itself, not the software that makes said content do things, that lies at the heart of the matter. This is the very reason why games like Assassin's Creed 2 boasted a staff of nearly four hundred employees across a number of contents and studios.

Plus, for the record, you do a great disservice to baldurs gate II with your description. Dont mistake low res for low content.

I'm not saying that there was little content but rather that the content that was there was easy to create. Hell, in some cases, the amount of content was shockingly low. There was precisely one (and only one) graphic for any type of item a character might use and any variety that seemed to exist was a palette swap of a trivial sort. This does not, by any stretch, make the game bad in any way. The reality I am attempting to illustrate here is that the content was easy to produce and thus there was simply more of it.

 

[MasterChief892039]

The game is appealing, entertaining, and acknowledges that it has fans that aren't necessarily straight males. You can nitpick gameplay elements if you want, but Bioware as a whole is taking huge steps in the right direction, and for that they deserve my money.

 

[Di'kut]

For the most part, I agree with you, but I still don't understand why people are complaining in places that are completely unrelated to Bioware. Go on the Bioware forums, or put it on your blog, not in totally random places.

The sad truth is that this will get locked and deleted in the Bioware forum. This is the "gaming section" of a "gaming magazine", where should he take it? Oprah?

If the thread doesn't deteriorate into name-calling, Bioware will generally let threads criticizing the game stay up, even if it is mostly negative criticism.

I take it you've never heard of Stanley Woo then? Worst moderator I've ever seen on any site, just look at the screencap I posted.

 

[Bobbity]

I really liked the game, but I definitely felt that a lot more could have been done with it.

OT: I agree with the OP, even if I don't agree with the hate itself. I really want EA to take this to heart, as should all developers.

 

[GreatVladmir]

My only gripe is this, why do I HAVE to be a human? Why can't I play a knife ears or a Dwarf? Why couldn't have Bioware made the Quinari a playable race, they're awesome! Now, I know some people will go "Oh but ME you HAVE to play a human lolz argument ivalid *+21,000 internet cock xp*" Well yes, that is true, but from the FIRST game you played a hoomon, it wasnt like ME1 you have a choice of races then ME2 they take that away from you, I wouldnt have this problem if DA:O was the same but it isn't and that can't be changed also.

Now I know Bio took a vastly more linear story book style with DA2 but it's not like they'd have to give you special openings, there are dwarfs n elfs in that first village that gets shafted in DA:O and there are dwarfs n elfs in Kirkwall, so it wouldnt change the story atall :/ but I guess elves n dwarfs playable would scare away all those new fans they have to the DragonAge series.

TL/DR; DA2 good, just lacking my elves n dwarfs! >:

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

The key word is "constructive" - saying you hate something without being specific doesn't do much good. For example, I liked both Dragon Age 1 and Dragon Age 2. My opinions could be boiled down to this:

Constructive criticism is overrated, it might be my choice of "style" but it really has no impact on sales or perception as much as a unison shitstorm brewing all over the internet.
Constructive criticism tends to get shoved into some thread (here for example so aptly labeled "Constructive Criticism" http://social.bioware.com/forum/Dragon-Age-II/Dragon-Age-II-Registered-Game-Owner-General-Discussion-NO-Spoilers-allowed/Constructive-Criticism--6568680-1.html ) and that's where it'll stay to either be ignored or maybe read once and ignored while you can't sweep a massive shitstorm under your rug and pretend it isn't there or choose not to heed it if you want to go on with another part to a franchise...

Bingo. The maelstrom of hate has a far, far better chance of impacting future iterations of the genre than some mildly worded list of possible improvements. It's idiotic, but that doesn't stop it from being true.

I can't help but think I'm talking to a fair number of very casual and/or young gamers in this thread. People are accusing others of fearing change or getting stuck in the past, but those arguments are just unbelievably flawed.

Change is only good when it marks improvement or innovation. In the case of DA2, we've seen the RPG become a lot more like EVERYTHING ELSE. That's not interesting or innovative. That's homogenization. That's creative bankruptcy. They aren't taking RPGs in a new direction; they're folding them back into the rest of gaming's march towards the mass market.

Stuck in the past? All of those arcane and impenetrable RPG mechanics modern gamers seem to hate so much exist for a reason. That reason: games don't possess the detail and complexity to model all of those mechanics in real time. You wouldn't need hit points and damage numbers if we had realistic, real-time damage modeling. You wouldn't need attack and defense stats, or armor and resistance stats, if we had realistic (and incredibly minute) physics and momentum modeling. All of those "stats" are stand-ins for things games still can't do.

I can't help but think that a lot of people are hoping for a DA3 that is basically a straight-up action RPG. Oddly enough, from a personal standpoint, I'd be somewhat okay with that because I love action RPGs. But I'd still think it was pretty damn stupid because that's not what DA was supposed to be. And it's not just a matter of saying "they're changing their minds about the game's design, so get your traditional RPG kicks somewhere else". There aren't a lot of options for that crowd anymore. I don't blame them one bit for lashing out. If their "juvenile behavior" has even a snowball's chance in hell of saving their favorite genre, I approve.

 

[Ambrose von Carstein]

So, basically, annual CoD games being the same is bad, but if DA2 was a carbon copy of DA:O it would be fine?
Also, the old BG style combat simply does not work in 3D. NWN already demonstrated that.