Zing said:
Actually I made two points, the plot and environments, two rather huge aspects to a video game that imho make or break whether it should be considered good or not. On it's own, reusing environments repeatedly and with as much zeal as BioWare did with DA2 ruins it. You claim you don't like trekking across vast expanses but Dragon Age: Origins was not like this at all, you traveled between the vastly different towns, cities and landscapes through loading screens and clever use of the map, but you still felt like it was an epic world you were saving, it wasn't anymore time consuming than DA2.
If BioWare had made a concious decision to set their game only in one city why would they have crafted it in areas as they did? Why not make it a huge bustling open world city like Rome in AC:Brotherhood, or any of the GTA games? The fact is that they ran into time or money constraints and cut major corners by reusing environments and confining the world to a small set of areas in one city, that is suppose to feel large but doesn't, it feels like a series of disjointed streets.
As for the plot...you say there is political overtones to the plot, but my question is what plot? Are there political overtones in one specific quest that you eventually get to? Probably. My point is that there is nothing at all driving this game to an end, there is no final goal, why should I keep playing Hawke? I don't care about him at all. I was thrust into his story with an ridiculous cold open that does not lend well to the games story (this review touches on this well http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/14/wit-the-opening-hours-of-dragon-age-ii/).
There's a myriad of other issues I could go into such as enemies randomly spawning or coming in waves out of no where, or bad writing, inconsistent writing, but I don't want to bloat this discussion anymore.
Oh we're into "In Your Humble Opinion" now, are we? That's progress. Two posts ago you were screaming that your opinion were FACTS.
I didn't "feel that it was an epic world I was saving" in DA:O to any great extent. I was actually gravely disappointed in the plot line for that game. They had purported to use the novels of George R.R. Martin as a reference point for their "dark fantasy", spoke about political intrigues and human weaknesses, and then threw up version #997 of "The Orcs are Coming!". DA:O was still a very enjoyable game for what it was, but trying to paint it as an epic narrative worthy of special commendation is preposterous.
Yeah, I can see an argument that Kirkwall is overly small, overly limited to a handful of areas, and those areas lack grandeur. Those are valid complaints you could level at all Bioware products since they abandoned the hand-painted backdrops of the Infinity Engine and moved to the bland utilitarianism of NWN and KOTOR. It's a weakness of their games in general, not of DA2 in particular. Again, if a host of wildly imaginative environments is your raison d'etre for playing CRPGS, you might want to avoid Bioware's offerings, as that is not their strength, and hasn't been for almost a decade.
Finally, I'm familiar with John's review of the first third of the game from RPS, and I find it unfortunate that you've piggybacked it here and selected key talking points from it instead of coming up with your own. This, again, is the essence of confirmation bias. You've decided you hate the game, so anything that supports that hate is TRUTH, and anything that does not is FANBOYISM. A cold opening? DA:O features several of them. So did ME1. So did BG2. Hell, even fucking Planescape Torment, hailed by many as the pinnacle of RPG design in its day, featured a cold opening. They are ubiquitous in all forms of media, and it is a hugely subjective and completely confusing complaint.
Inconsistent writing? I find the writing of the romantic subplots to be cringe inducing, as it has been for every romantic subplot Bioware has offered us since BG2. They are always aimed right at the pleasure centers of 12 year old boys. If you've played and enjoyed Bioware's previous offerings as you've claimed to, you're quite familiar with what you're in store for there. Otherwise, what bad writing? The writing is otherwise almost uniformly excellent. If you disagree, please furnish us with an example of said bad writing, and then maybe some examples of the EXCELLENT CRPG writing you're comparing it to.
Randomly spawning enemies was a way of gating difficulty. Did you play Awakenings? It was a pointless faceroll. The game was absurdly easy. DA:O also featured extra waves of opponents materializing out of "nowhere", as have numerous other genre entries. If you cannot effect a willing suspension of disbelief whilst playing your fantasy roleplaying dragon game, then I seriously don't know what to tell you.
Again, you are welcome to your opinions. You can thunder away all night that IMO THIS IS A BAD GAME FOR THESE REASONS. But your opinion is not fact, the loudness and aggressiveness with which you state it does not make it more compelling, and the fact other people enjoy the game and state so in reviews is not evidence of a vast conspiracy.
