Damn You Bioware!Follow

I just finished the game recently. Some disorganized thoughts:

Personally, I don't get the "wall o' text" complaint. I feel that the dialogue was generally well written and structured, and it was fully VA'd. The codex and written quests were a mild annoyance, but I grew to find that I could get by with the most cursory of glances to them without causing any detriment, so no biggie.

I also felt that many of the "morality" choices were implemented with laudable subtlety and realism (helping to avoid that "cartoonish" effect that Kavekk noted). I found myself often picking a response which I personally identified with, even if it caused me to miss out on rewards. I think that's saying a lot. I also found their spin on existing western fantasy cliches interesting; particularly the dwarfs with their caste-based society. Dialogue and quests really helped to flesh out the game's cultures.

My biggest beef was the reskinned equipment sets. The lack of variety in armor/weapons was a big disappointment. Combat gameplay was passable, but could use some heavy tweaking as well.

Other than those minor quibbles, I thoroughly enjoyed DA:O. Haven't felt compelled to get any DLC yet, but I'm not complaining about that at all.

Were you playing on the Xbox? I dunno, maybe it's a PS3 thing, or maybe it was patched, but I haven't had any problems with the AI. They all do exactly what I want, when I want.

No, should I? I had a few friends who gave it a "meh" so I never really looked into it. Plus, by the time I got my PS3, there were actually a bunch of good titles out.

But they did bring us Baldur's Gate. Man, that was a game.


I manually controlled each char, so having AI fudge ups was a non factor

I personally modded the difficulty level higher. I like hard games.

I had minor quibbles, like limited enemy variation, that DLC guy in camp, but all in all DA was well worth the money.

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In other news, does anyone still play Sid meiers alpha centaurai?

PC. There may have been a way to get the AI to do what I wanted, but at the very least it took me less effort to just beat the encounters without relying on AI allies than it did to get them do what I wanted them to do.

If you read Allegory's other topics about those games, he hates them. Because he wants to plan everything out and make the perfect character, and the choices were too difficult to realize what effect it would have on your characters Good/Evil value, and it made him mad. (Summing up a fairly large topic on the subject).

I'd imagine his dislike for other Bioware games stem from the same basic issues. Not being able to play and enjoy the game because he is too focused on what his character is going to end up like rather than just playing the game.

I do to, but the problem is that Bioware games thoroughly punish you for not knowing everything before hand.

Dragon Age has absolutely terrible descriptions of spells, and since you can't respec (except for using console commands in a rather glitchy manner) your only other alternative is to thoroughly research the ability you are thinking about learning. You are forced to make good evil decisions and conversation choices about characters that are highly unintuitive and have a significant effect on your game play. In essence, Bioware games punish you for having fun. Took this spell because you thought it sounded cool? Sorry it isn't, and you can't do anything about that. Said something to a character because it sounded funny? Turns out he didn't think so, he now hates you and is less effective in combat.

There are numerous other problems with the game. The controls are clunky and the combat is easy and straightforward (I used the exact same strategy for the majority of non solo encounters). While the voice acting was very good, the story and characters were dreadfully written and about as generic as you could get. While having a nice number of polygons I'm sure, the art was wholly uninspired.

I tend to shy away from these peripheral complaints because even if they were all fixed, at it's core Bioware doesn't know how to design a good game. They supplement this by tacking on things that the majority of people like, but the best they can ever do is a jewel encrusted ****.

And even further beyond that is the problem that Bioware basically produces the same game every time with an altered setting. One of my biggest complaintsabout the RPG genre as a whole is the lack of progress it has made. Not only are Bioware games bad, but they offer up nothing new. They continue to milk the stagnation. They don't produce the worst RPGs, but they might possibly have done the most harm to the RPG genre; certainly to western RPGs.

Edited, Jul 25th 2010 7:48pm by Allegory

That's what I was going to say...

I've definitely said things to people to get a joke and end up with them pissed off. And in the moment you never think it's going to be as insulting as they take it (regardless of who is actually right--them overreacting or you being an insensitive jerk).

But these things were never a huge deal. I think the largest approval drop is 30, and it's VERY obvious you are going to **** them off if you do that. And there are some things that can cause companions to leave, and (again) none of those are surprising.

Idk, the fact that I had to reason my dialogue choices like I would in life was part of what I liked. I wasn't sure of the effect, no, but I was usually correct in my assessment. Only a few times was I like "What? I didn't mean that!"

If everything was so clear, it would have been less fun for me I think.

In other news, I JUST hit my first really annoying glitch in the game. The quest got stuck and wouldn't move, so I had to restart from an earlier save. I actually COULD have fixed it, but I made some decisions that were truly stupid (considering what I know about the game):

-I knew the area down the path was an Auto-save point, but ran down instead of restarting.
-I hadn't made a save file, which I try to do regularly in case I ***** up something important, like a conversation with an NPC.
-I gave a gift item that I knew caused a scene to my character. But I should have waited, because those things can force a quest to move.
-In the middle of a break in the battle, I talked to Alistair and got his personal quest. Which is probably what borked the quest in the first place.

Every other time a quest has gotten "stuck" letting the game sit for a minute or two solved it. I agree these can be really annoying, but I get it considering the game was initially being designed as an exclusive PC title (from what I understand).

[EDIT]

Ugh, big complaint number 2 just occurred. Which I was much angrier about than the quest glitch, but can't actually blame Bioware for.

Disgusting spider used Overwhelm on me, pinning me to the ground right next to a wall. Which caused the camera to zoom up and focus on the demon attacking me. I'm an arachnophobe and was like twitching in my seat. >:(

Edited, Jul 25th 2010 9:31pm by idiggory

I've never heard of anyone else being upset or frustrated by their inability to predict how conversations will go in a video game.

I'm sorry you are such an angry person :(

Last I checked EVERY game imitates the flaws and problems of real life. Actually, most try and make a nice little critique of it. Maybe not EVERYDAY life, but they certainly all tackle more abstract themes--poverty, inner city culture, prejudice, ignorance, gangs, government, business, etc. DAO considers many of these, but also wants to include the everyday social side of it. Which, frankly, many other games do as well.

The only difference in DAO is that you play as you, not someone else, so you taking a much more active role in the events than in a normal game. When, in FFX, Tidus said something that didn't sound that bad but Lulu get's insulted, did you ***** because it wasn't the response you selected? No.

Of all the complaints I've heard about DAO, from many different types of people, you are honestly the only one who has complained about the responses to dialogue options. You are just wrong in making a sweeping assumption about what people enjoy here.

Lolwhat?

Do you spend the whole game just wandering around town doing peasant things? No. But plenty of games have the characters start in poverty. People don't enjoy doing mundane things, no. But that's irrelevant in your critique of DAO.

You made the claim in reference to dialogue, which is far from mundane. Do people want to hear a character talk about what they did with their mother on Saturday? No. But that isn't even remotely like what you get in the game. You get interaction, rather than jut have it chosen for you. If you REALLY hate making the choice, and would rather just have a story spoon fed to you, just always pick the top option. Problem solved.

Choosing how to interact with characters is far different from washing dishes.

You are trying to make a correlation for things that are fundamentally different. It just isn't true that people hate it when games remind them of real life. Are there certain ASPECTS to real life they could do without? Yes. But nothing in DAO is like suddenly coming down with pneumonia and having to sit in bed for a week.

[EDIT]

Persona 3 was quite a popular game, and you need to eat, sleep, do homework and go potty. Just saying.

Edited, Jul 26th 2010 12:12am by idiggory

Except that they're the chosen one and end up saving the world rather than dying in the gutter; you understand how that completely nullifies your statement right?

This isn't about the mundane. This is about you trying to pretend that poor control schemes and unhelpful tool tips somehow mimic the frustrations of real life and therefore make the game more realistic.

No, it wasn't. You completely missed the point if you thought that.