Dragon Age II and the decline of the classic RPG

[Canadish]

I never was too fond of the "classic" rpg style, so I don't mind this transformation at all.
As far as I'm concerned, pretty much all the changes from DA:O to DA2 were improvements.

I do feel like people try to ignore Dragon Age 2's huge flaws. The Escapist community in particular.
I don't know whether this is some kind of misguided loyalty to Bioware as a company, defiance of the majority for no reason or whether they just enjoyed some of the changes so much they completely expunged the bad from their mind.
"Classic" RPG vs "New" RPG aside, the game was a mess of lazy copy-pasting, railroading, and bugs.
Mass Effect 2 streamlined as well, and that was still a fantastic game.

To be completly honest Dragon Age 2 is a bad homolust fanfiction which felt like it was written by a Stephenie Meyer follower. Dragon Age 2 was squeezed into the Mass Effect template and it ruined the game.

I loved Dragon Age Origins but I was really dissapointed with Dragon Age 2; I really tried to like it as well.

As critical as I am, even I'll defend the game on the homosexual issue. There really was only one obnoxious scene with Anders, and that was only painful because the game didn't provide the player with an option to politely turn him town without making Hawke sound homophobic.

Though, you were right about the whole "Stephenie Meyer follower". David Gaider, lead writer is a huge fan of hers. Not that someone should be judged on what he reads in his free time.
(Not that you'll find me arguing that the writing didn't drop in quality between games. Melodrama! Wangst! Brooding!)

 

[MercurySteam]

After playing DA2 I look back at Origins as slow and boring. Perhaps it's just the standard 'newer is better' concept my mind is usually attuned to or perhaps DA2 is just a better overall game.

I can't really decide.

 

[Darth IB]

I never was too fond of the "classic" rpg style, so I don't mind this transformation at all.
As far as I'm concerned, pretty much all the changes from DA:O to DA2 were improvements.

What, you really like when they give you one zone with variable doors 12 times in a row?

No. That's why I put "pretty much" before the "all". I'm not saying DA2 was without fault - far from it - but the changes to combat, the streamlining of level-ups and crafting, the voiced PC, the dialogue wheel, etc, those changes were all massive improvements from DAO in my opinion.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

Most of those games are coming from hardcore PC gamers more than anything. To be honest, I fucking HATED Dragon Age: Origins. It's hands-down the clunkiest and most repetitive game I've played. Sure the story is good, but a good story doesn't mean jack shit if the gameplay isn't as engaging, and Dragon Age 2 rectified that.

And as for Dragon Age 2 being filled with the same dungeon over and over again? Yeah, Mass Effect 1 did that numerous times without shame and it didn't get as much flak as Dragon Age 2 did when it did that.

 

[JMeganSnow]

You do realize that DA2 had exactly neither of those? Even on nightmare, it was piss easy if you set your build right, and that just shouldn't happen.

Um, I've yet to play a game that WASN'T piss-easy if you "set your build right". Of course it's going to be easy if you use every effing twinktastic bit of OP bullshit in the effing game. It's SET to be hard if you DON'T do that. If you want a real challenge, don't build your character to be some over-twinked brute. THEN play it.

Also, endlessly spawning mobs out of thin air =/= difficulty...

They weren't "endlessly" spawning. I've PLAYED games with *literally* endlessly spawning mobs. In DA2 you could ALWAYS run out of enemies. If you want to make a complaint, complain about the fact that the fights were ALL THE SAME, in that you'd have an initial wave of mobs, then some more mobs that would show up, then maybe a third wave. It was tedious, yes, but the combat in Origins was tedious, too.

And one other thing, DA2 didn't have any character differentiation. It had 1.5 endings, and the choice of which ending you would see happened about 20 minutes before the outro...so, that.

Not sure if this is what I'd call "character differentiation", but maybe he was using the term differently. I've always thought of character differentiation as the fact that different builds feel different to play--and they do. The multiple-endings thing is not a necessary or even particularly valuable feature. It's quite possible that a lot of the options in DA2 will have an effect on DA3. They just didn't do a Origins-style epilogue recap, which makes perfect sense to me because a lot of the stuff IN the Origins recap got retconned anyway.

 

[Woodsey]

Dragon Age 2's problem was primarily dumb design flaws (ones that you wouldn't expect BioWare of all people to make), and I don't think its reduced RPG-ness from Origins was necessarily intentional (or as intentional as it became).

Origins was simply more accomplished and better made (that's ignoring the combat and stats debate - I'm more split on that).

I don't have much of a problem with advancing RPGs from Origins and its retro throwback (even though I loved it), but really, we should be going the way of The Witcher 2 as well as Mass Effect. Not all or nothing.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

I think for me it comes down to those little decisions that made me FEEL as if I was in control of a character(s). All that inventory management and stat modification, etc. Some people felt are archaic hold-overs from a bygone era.. honestly, that is what I WANT as an RPG player. It's what made me feel as if this was ENTIRELY my character to do with as I want.

DA2 and other modern games with RPG-like elements seem to rob us of that strategy found within building your characters.

Think of it this way. What if MMO's suddenly decided it would 'enhance' their gaming experience if they just made a bunch of pre-fabricated characters for people to choose from. Forget customizing your look, just choose from one of these twenty templates and get into the game. It would fail on its face because as silly as it might seem to some, one of the funnest parts of a game is customizing your hero's appearance.

All that is happening in RPG's these days when they say they are getting rid of the traditional is that they are removing CHOICE from the gamer, in an attempt to ad to the cinematic story telling. That's fine for those gamers who like to hit the ground running and demand non-stop action from start button to credit roll, but just like all books can't be 400 pages of balls in your face excitement, all GAMES shouldn't be like this either. For example, look at the Witcher 2. They aren't stripping that game of it's RPG elements for mass appeal. But there are many who wish they would. We'll see when Skyrim comes out how much traditional elements still matter... assuming that they don't "tweak it" so that you effectively just get one sword for the entire game (or an axe, you know, so you have a 'choice') that just evolves as you do. That'll get old REAL fast for me.

I think it all started downhill honestly when they stopped allowing you to simply name your own character. I think I miss that most of all in RPG's. Yes, I know they have cinematic stories to tell, but I agree with Yahtzee when he says that game designers are making a mistake and robbing us by constantly pushing things that could be told in the context of gameplay through cinematic blockbuster hollywood events and cutscenes. I want to ESCAPE by playing games and while I realize that taking on an avatar in the virtual world is something AKIN to "role-playing" it's not to me because the illusion is shattered every time someone in the game refers to my character as whatever stupid name THEY gave them, instead of me. For example in DAO vs DA2, everyone time someone yelled or said "Hawke!" It ruined the RPG element for me. Because I didn't like HAWKE as a name and in my head I was "Whalehammer, savior of ."
That burst my little imaginary bubble.

Eventually, us traditional RPG types will have to rely on mods from the community to fill in those blanks, those inventories, those variety of choices the designers left out. And should that fail, there is always the glory days of Balder's Gate, PlaneScape, and Septerra Core (which desperately needs some sort of update or sequel if there is justice in the universe).

 

[LiquidGrape]

Hey, I can drop articles too.

This is why Dragon Age 2 is better than Origins. [http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/138484-the-sisterhood-of-the-traveling-pantsless-rogue-dragon-age-iis-isabe/]

But really, I don't buy into this whole "halcyon days of RPG's" notion.

 

[Undead Dragon King]

Snip

Well said, but think about the example of Team Fortress 2. In the first few years after its release, it was essentially a game with next to no customization besides the alternate weapons that your characters carried. And people were just fine with that. They flocked in droves to the game, even when all Heavies looked exactly alike, even though the Heavy was an actual defined character- a bald, hulking, dumb, swarthy Russian. Or how every Demoman was the "black Scottish cyclops". It was a very, very thin layer of role-playing, but it was still there, thanks to the "Meet the Team" movies.

Then came the addition of hats and expanded weapon varieties, and the entire system changed. The concept of individual choice in character creation, a staple RPG element, was greatly increased. Now characters were running around in party hats, fedoras and halos, and were constructing their own weapons, which also raised overall balance of the new weapon types as an issue. It essentially changed TF2 into an MMO, complete with customizeable characters and grinding for the phat l00tz. The game itself has a different flavor to it now, and it actually cheapens the entire experience for me. I miss the days in TF2 when everyone looked the same and had the exact same weapons. It made the "Meet the Team" movies that much more fun to watch, but more importantly it meant that people were playing supremely balanced games based on individual skill, and with the actual DESIRE to play an FPS, not some kind of FPS/MMO hybrid that TF2 has become.

 

[Mordwyl]

Good. Pen and paper has no place in digital. Move on.

 

[ThisIsSnake]

Resets the sign to "0 days since Why I don't like [Insert Bioware Game]"

/snip

I like how you randomly capitalise words to give them emphasis. Also the Elder Scrolls series is pretty much action RPG's and they do give you essentially the same weapon over and over again, just calling it rusty, fine, tempered, perfect, immaculate etc. Also it's only the surname that's locked in DA2, being called Hawke is way less jarring than the best member of your squad being repeatedly called 'the warden'.

 

[Trilby]

The inclusion of RPG elements in other genres is likely not due to players loving RPGs and a "rebirth" of the genre, but rather developers trying to stuff their games with other Skinner Box elements to keep people playing for longer with less effort from the dev team.

(This is what I mean by Skinner Box: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2487-The-Skinner-Box)

Whether you like it or not, the big, heavy PC-based Western RPG is dying out. A large part of this is presumably due to the ever-diminishing PC market for big, expensive games - or at least for exclusives. AAA games simply cost too much to make these days for studios to take big risks, and for a number of reasons PC gaming is seen as high risk (easier piracy, harder to develop for different specs etc). RPGs of the type we're discussing don't tend to work all that well on console - the basic design inherent in many of these games of having a large number of different, situational abilities was conceived assuming that the user had a whole keyboard. WoW and other MMOs are extreme examples of this: often you'll find that every single key on your keyboard is bound to something, along with the Numpad and whatever buttons you have on your mouse.

As a result you either have to cut down the number of abilities and design your game around a more central combat system, or you have ridiculously long combos.

I remember a game which tried to get around this called Arx Fatalis, which was released for the PC and XBox. It wanted to keep the "lots of abilities" approach, so it put in a casting system where you cast spells by drawing a rune on the screen using the D-pad for the console or the mouse for the PC. (I'm sure this isn't an original idea, but it was the first time I saw it). It worked fairly well, but could definitely have been improved. If we're to see classic RPGs really work on consoles I expect to see something like this, at least for spellcasting (archery or swordplay already have plenty of good console examples to work from).

Another question, of course, is whether big studios will consider the "classic" RPG to be a viable genre for the console-playing demographic, even if you could get the mechanics down perfectly. To steal from Yahtzee's pet gripes for a moment, there's already a perception that all the consoletards want is an endless stream of burly, poorly voice-acted space marines shooting aliens from behind a chest-high wall where the colour palette is limited to gun-metal grey and dystopia brown. It's hard to know until we see a really good console RPG and the reactions to it, and I'm not entirely sure that's going to happen. Alternatively, we find a way to convince people to incorporate keyboard and mouse peripherals into their consoles on a wider scale, and then we can have the best of both worlds - the stability and surer graphical development of a console with the depth and complexity allowed by a keyboard or mouse.

 

[Sjakie]

Instead of finetuning the 'classic' RPG'theme, the new trend is: strip everything that might be seen as 'hard to comprehend for new players'. Just so they can lure more new players into buying.

It's sound bussiness, but fan's of oldschool RPG's feel neglected.

I would also point out, that if you take the time to compare the writing from old RPG's like Planescape, Baldur's Gate 1/2, etc. You can see a steady decline in lore that is writen into the games itself. Probably because voiceacting is expensive and developers somehow think that 'reading is boring for new rpg-players'. I think that's a shame.
WoW does it well though: still plenty of lore background, but you can skip it without missing any gameplay. Classic's tended to have you delve into the lore, because you would miss out on quests/gameplay if you didn't.

Hey, I can drop articles too.

This is why Dragon Age 2 is better than Origins. [http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/138484-the-sisterhood-of-the-traveling-pantsless-rogue-dragon-age-iis-isabe/]

Your missing the point from the OP, this is not a vs. thread. it's about the morphing of RPG's from years ago till today's standard RPG's. what you or I prefer is a just matter of taste.
We all agree that todays RPG's have better Graphics and interfaces and streamlined gameplay.

 

[Adzma]

This is why the future of games is in Indie development. AAA titles have gone the way of Hollywood blockbusters, it's about maximum profit, not maximum innovation.

I don't hate DA2, but like the writer of that article said DAO's major selling point was that it was a throwback to RPGs of old. DA2 just seems like a cheap cash cow... probably because it more or less is.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

Snip

Well said, but think about the example of Team Fortress 2. In the first few years after its release, it was essentially a game with next to no customization besides the alternate weapons that your characters carried. And people were just fine with that. They flocked in droves to the game, even when all Heavies looked exactly alike, even though the Heavy was an actual defined character- a bald, hulking, dumb, swarthy Russian. Or how every Demoman was the "black Scottish cyclops". It was a very, very thin layer of role-playing, but it was still there, thanks to the "Meet the Team" movies.

Then came the addition of hats and expanded weapon varieties, and the entire system changed. The concept of individual choice in character creation, a staple RPG element, was greatly increased. Now characters were running around in party hats, fedoras and halos, and were constructing their own weapons, which also raised overall balance of the new weapon types as an issue. It essentially changed TF2 into an MMO, complete with customizeable characters and grinding for the phat l00tz. The game itself has a different flavor to it now, and it actually cheapens the entire experience for me. I miss the days in TF2 when everyone looked the same and had the exact same weapons. It made the "Meet the Team" movies that much more fun to watch, but more importantly it meant that people were playing supremely balanced games based on individual skill, and with the actual DESIRE to play an FPS, not some kind of FPS/MMO hybrid that TF2 has become.

The problem with that, as I see it is that Team Fortress 2 was never MEANT to be an RPG or an MMORPG.. but an FPS online multiplayer shooter. That's why it feels wrong to you and it has lost some of its luster. However, if a game that was intended to BE an RPG suddenly decides it wants to scale BACK (the opposite of TF2 because that game got MORE to its detriment) it loses what makes it an RPG.

I think the problem is that the industry seems to be trying to MARRY what were formerly different and separate game types into hybrid types in order to entice a broader audience. It's not enough to simply be a good FPS anymore, it MUST have RPG "elements!" I think thats where things have gone wrong, because how many games now seem to be trying to "bridge gaps" between other game types now? How long until we see the first "Shooter with fighting game elements?" They've already tried the shooters with strategy game elements involved... But another problem I think is that a lot of games seem to be designed around someone's desire to tell a STORY rather than make a game. Homefront is a blatant example of this, where it seems they were more interested in the idea and story of the game rather than the GAME itself. Final Fantasy is also a series that is a culprit of that, to the point that they've scaled back nearly all of the "RPG" in the game and have essentially made corridor encounter games that exist only to fill the gaps between epic story telling cut scenes. I'm scared to death that Skyrim is going to go this route and we'll end up with a game where you essentially swing the same sword at the same type of enemies as you go from cutscene A to cutscene B in order to get some writer's STORY told rather than immerse you in a fantasy world of escapism.

 

[DTWolfwood]

Further proof that developers of games can never win. (at least the big AAA studios with hyped franchises)

You make the same game twice, and ppl ***** about it being the same.

You make a different game as a sequel and ppl ***** about it not being the same as the original.

MAKE UP YOUR GODDAMN MINDS!

I personally love both games, and love them for 2 very different reasons. I don't need to compare one over they other, i just took them as they're given to me.

love them both.

 

[Hyper-space]

snip

You do realize that DA2 had exactly neither of those? Even on nightmare, it was piss easy if you set your build right, and that just shouldn't happen.
Also, endlessly spawning mobs out of thin air =/= difficulty...

And one other thing, DA2 didn't have any character differentiation. It had 1.5 endings, and the choice of which ending you would see happened about 20 minutes before the outro...so, that.

I think you both got me confused, i am not talking about DA2 specifically, i am more talking about RPGs in general (as the article was more about that than DA2) and i am pretty sure you have to have a tactic when playing it on insanity mode, there would be no guides to playing the game if it were so.

And character differentiation is not endings (which kind of fell in the "middle of the trilogy" trap), but things like classes, skills and so forth, just any action that makes this particular incarnation of your character different (archer, mage, warrior, etc) from previous/other incarnations.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

Resets the sign to "0 days since Why I don't like [Insert Bioware Game]"

/snip

I like how you randomly capitalise words to give them emphasis. Also the Elder Scrolls series is pretty much action RPG's and they do give you essentially the same weapon over and over again, just calling it rusty, fine, tempered, perfect, immaculate etc. Also it's only the surname that's locked in DA2, being called Hawke is way less jarring than the best member of your squad being repeatedly called 'the warden'.

Thanks. I've done that since.. man.. forever. I always capitalize words to give them that "umph!" to drive a point home.

As for the locking of names to make voice acting easier, I'm tempted to say I'd be more satisfied if they just incorporated some sort of text-to-voice software that digitally read the name you entered. Haha it'll sound funny, but kinda cool when the computer digitally tries to say the name you've given in that robotic voice:

"KnobStomper, look out! The enemy is upon us!"

And yet, I would probably shed tears of adulation.

 

[Undead Dragon King]

I think the problem is that the industry seems to be trying to MARRY what were formerly different and separate game types into hybrid types in order to entice a broader audience. It's not enough to simply be a good FPS anymore, it MUST have RPG "elements!" I think thats where things have gone wrong, because how many games now seem to be trying to "bridge gaps" between other game types now? How long until we see the first "Shooter with fighting game elements?" They've already tried the shooters with strategy game elements involved... But another problem I think is that a lot of games seem to be designed around someone's desire to tell a STORY rather than make a game. Homefront is a blatant example of this, where it seems they were more interested in the idea and story of the game rather than the GAME itself. Final Fantasy is also a series that is a culprit of that, to the point that they've scaled back nearly all of the "RPG" in the game and have essentially made corridor encounter games that exist only to fill the gaps between epic story telling cut scenes. I'm scared to death that Skyrim is going to go this route and we'll end up with a game where you essentially swing the same sword at the same type of enemies as you go from cutscene A to cutscene B in order to get some writer's STORY told rather than immerse you in a fantasy world of escapism.

Agreed. However, there are some examples where this system actually works across genres. Case in point: the Warcraft and Starcraft RTS serieses. When I picked up Starcraft 2 for the multiplayer (which I'm absolutely terrible at), I read the Starcraft backstory from the game manual, and I was really impressed by the complexity, originality and detail of it. Plots like these are great material to build a franchise on, and Starcraft 2's campaign did an excellent job of telling the unfolding story of Jim Raynor through variations of the Starcraft RTS model in its missions. Were the basic building blocks of the game still there? Yes, but they were placed under specific constraints that would help further the overall story. The same could be said for Warcraft III and its expansion. Blizzard has shown us that it's possible to marry storytelling and gameplay outside of the RPG, but many developers havn't understood how yet.