Well, while it's to each their own, I liked the game because the combat was easy to grasp and, with the number of skills at hand, it was slightly more interesting than some games. It had a pretty good story and such, sure the graphics weren't the best but you could see what was going on clearly enough. Honestly graphics complaints are jsut a little bit whiny if you ask me, there's too much focus on them.
Dragon Age : Origins - An utter disappointment ?
- Thread starter Jimbo1212
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What you describes sounds exactly like an RPG, not a sandbox game, there is a difference. In in an RPG you have choices, often exactly like what you described. In a sandbox, typically its an open world, and you have a set story and you have to explore the world and have complete freedom in where you can go. This is not the case with DA, hate to burst your bubble. You can pick the order, but the missions are always the same. You have different choices, but the outcome is defined. You can pick your characters, but you never have to explore to find them, they usually just fall in as the story progresses (there are a few exceptions to this, I understand that). There is no open world, it is all instanced. And as for the mention of side quests being optional, isn't that why they're called side-quests?fleacythesheep said:
My god, Bioware is ripping themselves off... again!MechaBlue said:Starke said:Mass Effect was a third person shooter disguised as an RPG with a cheesy plot. Dragon Age was an Isometric RPG with horrifically bad writing. I don't really see the similarities...
So, you have a background, but it's not important for more than one or two missions. Then you get recruited into the military. Something goes horribly wrong when Someone betrays the government and you become the super special leader who is the only one of your kind of a ragtag team in order to stop them. One of them will be the warrior dude, one will be the young guy who makes dry comments and one will be the sweet, meek bisexial girl who is trying to deny something. You go through three major missions with lots of side quests and wind up confronting Bad Guy. Somewhere around here at least one person who has the potential to be in your party will die. Then you wade through a bunch of minions to kill the Big Bad that has threatened the world countless times and are a big hero. Then you get to choose who's in charge of the government.
Your choices in classes are the damage guy, the dude with super powers and the guy who can open those damn chests/lockers. You choices in dialogue are to threaten bodily harm on everything that moves, offer help in every situation or to ignore everything. There will also be an option to make yourself more persuasive to get some of the most hilarious dialogue in the game.
EDIT: Added a few.
Okay, in fairness, that seems to be the plot of basically every Bioware game since... actually, pretty much all of them with the possible exception of Baldur's Gate (1 & 2) and MDK2.
It's news to us all. A horde if idiots were released onto the Internets.JuryNelson said:
Here, Nelson, let me demonstrate how to identify them for you, so you can avoid them in the future.
You're quite right. A lot of material, even classical legends are not exactly original. Everything from Arthurian legend to Dragon Age Origins is derivative of something. The only question is this; Does it do anything interesting with it's influences? An idiot will tell you that it doesn't matter because it isn't completely revolutionary, but an intelligent person will attempt to assess if a given work does something interesting with its influencing sources. Needless to say, there is a lot of debate on what constitutes "interesting."JuryNelson said:
They will then often draw upon some deranged and (often) technically correct historical detail and misrepresent it.JuryNelson said:
For example, if someone were to, say, praise the originality of Shakespeare, then they would be missing a fundamental aspect of the individual and his work. Shakespeare was, as a playwright, a sensationalist. In a modern context he is analogous to Joel Silver or Michael Bey. He provided visceral entertainment to make his living.
The only legitimate similarity between the work of Shakespeare and Bioware is that there are many individuals out there today that mistakenly believe that the bulk of their content is much deeper than it actually is.
Or you can make your own entertainment? Anyway, hope this has helped you learn how to determine if you're speaking to someone who has something relevant to offer in a discussion.JuryNelson said:
I think DA:O (hey look, a surprised face), is one of those games that gets better over time, since it's very story driven (like a book).Starke said:
I haven't finished it either, I was just trying to convince the OP to try it a bit more xD
Also I recall the OP asking us why was the game so praised by the critics (or maybe it was a rhetorical question).
But I'm still standing my ground and say that the this particular game should only be judged after finishing the whole thing.
But that's my opinion.
(END ITZ DE OUNLI THYNG DAT MATURZZZ!!!!)
:'3
I tried to like it, but between a weak story and awkward movement, I just started getting tired.
Bioware has made it's bread and butter off of player familiarity with both their story structure, the tag along NPCs, and even the mission set (a la "go to these checkpoint planets so you can continue your mission"). When a player picks up a Bioware game, they know exactly what they're getting and even who they're going to see. There's no real mystery to it, whether it's Carth Onasi, Kaiden Alenko, Alistair, or Sky from Jade Empire, they are all the same character with a few cosmetic changes and maybe (if we're lucky) a few tweaks in their personality (or in some cases a better or worse VA). We know that we'll probably have to go to three or four checkpoints before being able to continue on with the main quest and after we finish these and a few side quests, we know that we'll be facing the final boss. If you strip everything else away from any of the Bioware games of the last ten years, you'll find the similarities between them, reskinned.JuryNelson said:
Does this change the fact that they can be enjoyable? No. Does it hurt their claims towards originality? Yes. Especially when their writing tends to rely on the same old cliches we've seen a million times before, not just from them, but from every other writer in every other medium who got there first.
This is not as readily apparent in games like KoTOR or Mass Effect. For KoTOR because we, the player expect for a Star Wars game to be cheesy good fun, full of archetypes who are barely fleshed out characters with a clear good guy and a clear bad guy with not a lot of thought in the in-between. Mass Effect because it's presentation is unique, there hasn't really been a very successful space RPG before. It was a hole in the market waiting to be filled and because it was new and unique in that aspect people were more wiling to accept or overlook the failings of the story (More recently because the story for Mass Effect 1 is much, much, much better than the story for Mass Effect 2).
The problem with relying on archetypes and cliches when returning to a DnD like setting is that everyone else has gotten there first. Even Bioware has been there before they had Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate I and II. If we assume that the player has never been introduced to the likes of J.R.R Tolkien (who was the founding father of many of today's fantasy tropes), Robert Jordan, George R.R Martin and the other fantasy epics of their kind, they've still probably had a great deal of exposure to every single aspect of Dragon Age's story somewhere else. I'm not saying that one cannot create something new and original out of older material or fantasy cliches, it's just that Bioware doesn't and hasn't. Their writing style has never lent itself to not relying on their standard cliche set or their standard story structure. The key to originality is doing something different with the options presented, combining different elements in a way that comes together to create something that feels new. If it feels new then it doesn't matter whether it is or not.
Dragon Age's story is also as terrible as it is unoriginal so there's a lot more required of the player to forgive it.
The standard definition of the verb "to write" is to write it down on paper. Shakespeare did write his plays out and even if the idea that began them was not original, the end product certainly was. He did not become one of the greatest founding and enduring stones of Western Literature if he hadn't. For example the idea of having a play in five acts instead of just three like the classic Greek tragedies comes from him and Marlowe. He was the first to combine high brow comedy with low brow in a way that was not offensive for either the nobility or the peasantry and he was skilled enough in his writing to be able to make cutting political commentaries about both the nobility and the monarchy without losing his head (and the possibility of that happening was very high).JuryNelson said:
You clearly have not done enough research on Shakespeare to truly understand why he is remembered as great. I'll also tell you that if you went into any college classroom with a Professor who studied English Literature (not even having specialized in Shakespeare) and voiced that opinion, you'd be laughed out of the room. And if you did say that to any of my professors, they would have cooked and eaten you for breakfast.
The point I'm making to you is: in my brief study of Shakespeare (two classes in college) in my English Major education, I learned more unique, useful, interesting things from him in the way to tell stories. From Bioware I have only learned what not to do.
Oh yes, and Shakespeare's stories are much, much, much better. Richard III, Henry VIII, Henry IV, Titus Andronicus, King Lear, A Winter's Tale, The Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Merchant of Venice... There are so many and they are all so excellent that writers, movie executives, etc keep returning to them for inspiration and that they continue to be revived and modernized, their themes used and reused, and Shakespeare still has a very large following of people who genuinely love his works from the 1600s until now.
Can Bioware say the same?
I'm fine with talking, I'm just not fine with the way it seemed to be presented as slightly more important than gameplay.Kelthurin said:
I never said the RPG genre is my kind of genre, I did like Fallout 3 though.
I really didn't like how talking took up more time in Dragon Age for the first few ours than gameplay though.
