Poll: Dragon Age 2 vs. The Witcher 2
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I'm pretty sure they have learned from their flaws (hopefully).
I made this post right before I went to bed. Got up this morning, went to work and decided to check the responses. Wow, this thread is on fire.
A few people have said that versus threads are frowned upon here. I'll remember that.
I know Dragon Age 2 got a lot of heat, but I needed an recent RPG game to compare to The Witcher 2 to give me an idea.
I've played The Witcher 1 and never completed it. It had a lot of good stuff, but ultimately I couldn't get past the broken gameplay battles, clunky inventory and a lot of bugs. I know a new version came out later which supposedly has fixed all this, but by then I really couldn't get back into the game.
Now the sequel has been released and it had me worried that it might have had certain issues. Reading through the reactions of everyone I've gotten a pretty clear picture of The Witcher 2. It's an awesome game, but there still might be a bit of a gameplay issue. Though it's only a minor thing now.
Incidentally, the way how some people have described The Witcher 2 piqued my interest. So I'm gonna give it a try.
Thanks for the comments.
A few people have said that versus threads are frowned upon here. I'll remember that.
I know Dragon Age 2 got a lot of heat, but I needed an recent RPG game to compare to The Witcher 2 to give me an idea.
I've played The Witcher 1 and never completed it. It had a lot of good stuff, but ultimately I couldn't get past the broken gameplay battles, clunky inventory and a lot of bugs. I know a new version came out later which supposedly has fixed all this, but by then I really couldn't get back into the game.
Now the sequel has been released and it had me worried that it might have had certain issues. Reading through the reactions of everyone I've gotten a pretty clear picture of The Witcher 2. It's an awesome game, but there still might be a bit of a gameplay issue. Though it's only a minor thing now.
Incidentally, the way how some people have described The Witcher 2 piqued my interest. So I'm gonna give it a try.
Thanks for the comments.
Great, now you have reminded me of ghost town of Kirkwall. I am pretty sure that Hawke should go down in history as a mass murderer. He killed at least 2/3 of Kirkwall's population by himself.nbamaniac said:
Ugh....[sub]fucking fanboys, how do they work?[/sub]Xzi said:
There are only about 4 endings that have any difference in Witcher 2, with the rest having minor differences (such as if you let someone live or die, ect.) and even then it doesn't make it "factually" (fucking opinions, how do they work?) better, its like saying that because Bioshock had more different endings than Half-life its a better FPS. And you cannot spam any spells in DA2 as there is a hefty cooldown, which leads me to believe that you're full of shit.
The fact of the matter is, these are two pretty different games in terms of combat and mechanics, with the only similarities being the themes involved and both of them being a sequel. That's it, so take your head out of your ass and accept that there is something called OPINIONS (some people like oranges, some people like apples). Trying to argue otherwise will only make you look like the flaming fanboy that you are.
As another poster said, The Witcher 2 has atmosphere or soul or whatever you want to call it. You can tell it was lovingly crafted with a great deal of patience. DA was nowhere close, although it did have some good moments.
I got DA2 when it came out. As I got to Chapter 3, where you are drawn to pick either the Mage Side or the Templars' side, I got TW2. I simply could not stop playing and not only played TW2 to the end, but replayed both the Roche and Iorveth paths. I have yet to go back to DA2 but probably will.
What I love about TW2 wasn't just "4 alternate endings", there were a myriad of choices you had to make that impacted the world throughout the game.
*SPOILERS* EXAMPLES
For example, I noticed that if you insist Prince Stennis gets a trial instead of letting him be lynched on the spot, then the downside is, as predicted by a bystander, that a jury of nobles finds him innocent despite the evidence to the contrary, and he rides to power on the sacrifice of Saskia, the nonhumans, and the human peasantry --- making their victory against King Henselt a hollow one, they just replaced one vain power hungry monarch with another. I liked the choice between "Protocol/Rule of Law" and "Justice" - sometimes the two are at odds.
Despite your best efforts to chose the lesser evil, or to uphold simple decency or even tolerance, events unfolded counter to your intentions. Sometimes, your friends/allies did morally repugnant stuff, and you had to decide whether to stick with them out of friendship/obligation. Roche rescued you from prison, but did he oppose the mayor of Flotsam because he was a corrupt and wicked tyrant, or because of the simple fact that Loredo betrayed Temeria by offering Flotsam to a rival king? Would Roche have tolerated Loredo's management style if he was the King's Man? I get the feeling Roche would.
People had a reason for doing what they did and being who they were besides just being "Evil" or "Crazy/Obsessed/Possessed" For example, Ves was victimized by Squirrels which colored her perspectives on Elves. The main protagonist is not just the pawn of the Nilfgaardians, he's using them to revive his Witcher School. He's also saved you AND the lost love of your life.
*END SPOILERS*
Dragon Age 2 had some cool points, but not anywhere near the same level of immersion as TW2. DA2 had some not-so-clear Good-Selfish-Evil choices, but most were in that vein. All the coulda-woulda-shouldas add to TW2's value. Moreover, TW2 gives a fantastic sense of place, it's simply richer than DA2.
TW2s one big flaw is that the Prologue combat is very hard and some of the boss fights aren't intuitive (the Kayan is the hardest fight in the game, IMHO).
As for the sex and slang, some of the best movies and tv series I've ever seen, or novels I have read, have plenty of Sex and Slang. In the minds of many - particularly parents - there is, for some reason, a belief that violence, sex, and slang are worse in video games, even though they appear with more frequency in many books and movies and television shows those same parents let their kids watch or even watch them with.
I got DA2 when it came out. As I got to Chapter 3, where you are drawn to pick either the Mage Side or the Templars' side, I got TW2. I simply could not stop playing and not only played TW2 to the end, but replayed both the Roche and Iorveth paths. I have yet to go back to DA2 but probably will.
What I love about TW2 wasn't just "4 alternate endings", there were a myriad of choices you had to make that impacted the world throughout the game.
*SPOILERS* EXAMPLES
For example, I noticed that if you insist Prince Stennis gets a trial instead of letting him be lynched on the spot, then the downside is, as predicted by a bystander, that a jury of nobles finds him innocent despite the evidence to the contrary, and he rides to power on the sacrifice of Saskia, the nonhumans, and the human peasantry --- making their victory against King Henselt a hollow one, they just replaced one vain power hungry monarch with another. I liked the choice between "Protocol/Rule of Law" and "Justice" - sometimes the two are at odds.
Despite your best efforts to chose the lesser evil, or to uphold simple decency or even tolerance, events unfolded counter to your intentions. Sometimes, your friends/allies did morally repugnant stuff, and you had to decide whether to stick with them out of friendship/obligation. Roche rescued you from prison, but did he oppose the mayor of Flotsam because he was a corrupt and wicked tyrant, or because of the simple fact that Loredo betrayed Temeria by offering Flotsam to a rival king? Would Roche have tolerated Loredo's management style if he was the King's Man? I get the feeling Roche would.
People had a reason for doing what they did and being who they were besides just being "Evil" or "Crazy/Obsessed/Possessed" For example, Ves was victimized by Squirrels which colored her perspectives on Elves. The main protagonist is not just the pawn of the Nilfgaardians, he's using them to revive his Witcher School. He's also saved you AND the lost love of your life.
*END SPOILERS*
Dragon Age 2 had some cool points, but not anywhere near the same level of immersion as TW2. DA2 had some not-so-clear Good-Selfish-Evil choices, but most were in that vein. All the coulda-woulda-shouldas add to TW2's value. Moreover, TW2 gives a fantastic sense of place, it's simply richer than DA2.
TW2s one big flaw is that the Prologue combat is very hard and some of the boss fights aren't intuitive (the Kayan is the hardest fight in the game, IMHO).
As for the sex and slang, some of the best movies and tv series I've ever seen, or novels I have read, have plenty of Sex and Slang. In the minds of many - particularly parents - there is, for some reason, a belief that violence, sex, and slang are worse in video games, even though they appear with more frequency in many books and movies and television shows those same parents let their kids watch or even watch them with.
Having played both games and enjoyed them for the different experiences they are, I can weigh in on this particular topic at some length, whee! Not that I really need to though, there simply isn't any comparison - a cursory glance will tell you that one of these games feels like a labor of love, filled with gorgeous environments, venal inhabitants, compelling drama, quests that were all actually interesting, choices that actually matter and dramatically alter events, and all that jazz.
The other game feels like a bit of a cash-in, rushed to market well before it was really finished, riddled with lazy environment and quest design and only saved from total mediocrity by the slightly better than average writing and character design, coupled with decently entertaining combat.
Both settings, Dragon Age's an original IP heavily inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire while The Witcher's is derived from a series of Polish fantasy novels revolving around the life and times of the titular "Witcher", Geralt of Rivia, occupy the broad genre classified as "low fantasy" - that is to say, sure you have elves and dwarves and dragons and whatnot, but the tales within those settings are not "epic struggles of the virtuous good against the cravenly evil!", but are rather intended as a mirror held 'gainst the darker aspects of our own present day reality, all the while couched in the trappings of fantasy. Thus they consist of equal parts social commentary and world building, and both are intended to be bleak, brutal, and "adult-oriented", suggesting that they offer a world where there is no good or evil but only shades of grey.
One of those succeeds on all counts, the other seems to think that splashing ridiculous amounts of blood all over your characters after a fight will suffice. One confronts you with genuinely uncomfortable and (at times) extremely unpleasant scenarios, some of which you may have inadvertently set in motion yourself - rapes, torture, murder, oppression, all these things abound, and the wicked may never find themselves brought to any sort of real justice; whether you would even try to seek it is another matter. The other one postulates an interesting dynamic between magic users and ardent servants of the prevailing faith, but then lessens just about all the impact the tension and injustice holds by making almost everyone on either side bat shit crazy.
If you've played either of the two games in question, you've probably worked out that Dragon Age, while an interesting series with quite a few things to recommend it, is the game that suffers from a world that is generally a lot more interesting than what it is you specifically are being asked to do inside of it, with the first conforming a bit too closely to the cliches of "epic fantasy", and the sequel going for a very different take within that universe that would probably be getting hailed as an unqualified masterpiece were it not so abundantly clear the game was rushed out the door. It's not so much that Dragon Age 2 was cut short (though the story itself offers little real resolution, even within the conceit of the framing narrative through interrogation - we don't really get a solid sense of just what the questioner hoped to achieve by asking for The Champion's tale in the first place), but that everywhere you look you can see the corners they cut along the way to that ending; it's hard to be charitable to the designers once you've noticed that all caves, no matter where you might find them, appear to be exactly the same place. It is not by any stretch of the imagination a bad game, but it is a fairly disappointing one given we've seen the company behind it do better in the past.
The Witcher 2 on the other hand is a masterpiece and a real feather in CDProjekt's cap - it's bloody hard, the tutorial isn't really anything much of the sort, and parts of the interface could seriously use an overhaul (if what they did with the previous game is any indication, that very well might happen, but until then we have mods at least!), but the game itself is gorgeous, engaging, and ridiculously entertaining even when horrible things are happening.
People who look only as far as the (infrequent, but actually unavoidable and indeed, present within the first few minutes of the game) nudity and coarse language and conclude the game is therefore "immature" are missing the point: you could say that about the first game, with its silly cheesecake pin-up illustrations rewarded for sleeping with the various digital ladies, but here the nudity actually serves a narrative purpose - establishing Triss and Geralt as a couple, or illustrating that the talk about Phillipa Eilhart's sexual proclivities is in fact entirely accurate (and thereby reinforcing other aspects of her character via word of mouth about exceptions made for the sake of ambition alone). Whether any actual "sort of on-screen" sex ever happens at all is entirely up to you, and the sometimes ridiculous dialogs that, while certainly optional, didn't actually give clear indication that sex was a logical outcome of the conversation that riddled the first game are long gone - you'll know exactly what you're getting into and will be given ample time to, you know, not go through with things if that is your inclination.
If you do, well, sex, just like profanity, bigotry, corruption, and all the best and worst aspects of the human condition, is in fact a thing that happens in life - if you're used to fantasy settings that whitewash over all the grimier bits that must inevitably be transpiring within them then it may seem brazen and "exploitative", but it isn't really; depicting what the player knows is going to happen through a fairly tasteful soft-core cutscene rather than a fade-to-black just adds verisimilitude. People swear, people "plough" (to use an oh so common expression amongst the Nordlings), and people can be downright bastards to each other, and The Witcher 2 isn't afraid to show you any of that.
Looking at how CDProjekt handled sex in that game, it's hard to believe that anyone ever made a big deal out of Bioware's "sex, only not really because we won't ever actually depict it, or if we do, we'll inexplicably have the characters first put on underwear that they quite possibly weren't wearing to begin with" scenes - for all that they seem to revel in the "controversy" that surrounds how they tackle the subject of sex in their games, they have a decidedly immature approach to depicting it, like they're too ashamed to fully acknowledge what it is they're purporting to show you. It's one thing to simply not ever depict sexual activities on screen while allowing them to take place off screen, and it's fine if you don't want your game to feature nudity, but to depict sex in a fashion that implies that clothing stays on throughout is just silly.
But then so is expecting us to accept that all caves and underground areas around Kirkwall have identical layouts, or that enemies can magically appear from the sky in waves, or even silly little things like how your swords/daggers/whatnot can "magically" float an inch or so from the back of your armor without anything actually holding them there[footnote]It genuinely floored me a little when I saw that the character design for Geralt in The Witcher 2 incorporated straps attaching the scabbard for his swords onto the bandoleer that he wears, and that the bandoleer itself was an independent element which the character would still wear even if you take your armor off for some reason; likewise, the straps and scabbards are all separate elements that vary from sword to sword, disappearing entirely from your bandoleer if you don't have any weapons equipped.[/footnote], and Dragon Age 2 asks us to ignore all of that; individually none of those were necessarily deal-breakers, but there is only so much a reasonable person can overlook before they start crying foul. With Dragon Age 2, Bioware definitely crossed that threshold.
The other game feels like a bit of a cash-in, rushed to market well before it was really finished, riddled with lazy environment and quest design and only saved from total mediocrity by the slightly better than average writing and character design, coupled with decently entertaining combat.
Both settings, Dragon Age's an original IP heavily inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire while The Witcher's is derived from a series of Polish fantasy novels revolving around the life and times of the titular "Witcher", Geralt of Rivia, occupy the broad genre classified as "low fantasy" - that is to say, sure you have elves and dwarves and dragons and whatnot, but the tales within those settings are not "epic struggles of the virtuous good against the cravenly evil!", but are rather intended as a mirror held 'gainst the darker aspects of our own present day reality, all the while couched in the trappings of fantasy. Thus they consist of equal parts social commentary and world building, and both are intended to be bleak, brutal, and "adult-oriented", suggesting that they offer a world where there is no good or evil but only shades of grey.
One of those succeeds on all counts, the other seems to think that splashing ridiculous amounts of blood all over your characters after a fight will suffice. One confronts you with genuinely uncomfortable and (at times) extremely unpleasant scenarios, some of which you may have inadvertently set in motion yourself - rapes, torture, murder, oppression, all these things abound, and the wicked may never find themselves brought to any sort of real justice; whether you would even try to seek it is another matter. The other one postulates an interesting dynamic between magic users and ardent servants of the prevailing faith, but then lessens just about all the impact the tension and injustice holds by making almost everyone on either side bat shit crazy.
If you've played either of the two games in question, you've probably worked out that Dragon Age, while an interesting series with quite a few things to recommend it, is the game that suffers from a world that is generally a lot more interesting than what it is you specifically are being asked to do inside of it, with the first conforming a bit too closely to the cliches of "epic fantasy", and the sequel going for a very different take within that universe that would probably be getting hailed as an unqualified masterpiece were it not so abundantly clear the game was rushed out the door. It's not so much that Dragon Age 2 was cut short (though the story itself offers little real resolution, even within the conceit of the framing narrative through interrogation - we don't really get a solid sense of just what the questioner hoped to achieve by asking for The Champion's tale in the first place), but that everywhere you look you can see the corners they cut along the way to that ending; it's hard to be charitable to the designers once you've noticed that all caves, no matter where you might find them, appear to be exactly the same place. It is not by any stretch of the imagination a bad game, but it is a fairly disappointing one given we've seen the company behind it do better in the past.
The Witcher 2 on the other hand is a masterpiece and a real feather in CDProjekt's cap - it's bloody hard, the tutorial isn't really anything much of the sort, and parts of the interface could seriously use an overhaul (if what they did with the previous game is any indication, that very well might happen, but until then we have mods at least!), but the game itself is gorgeous, engaging, and ridiculously entertaining even when horrible things are happening.
Phillipa Eilhart gets her eyes gouged out with a spoon, egad!
If you do, well, sex, just like profanity, bigotry, corruption, and all the best and worst aspects of the human condition, is in fact a thing that happens in life - if you're used to fantasy settings that whitewash over all the grimier bits that must inevitably be transpiring within them then it may seem brazen and "exploitative", but it isn't really; depicting what the player knows is going to happen through a fairly tasteful soft-core cutscene rather than a fade-to-black just adds verisimilitude. People swear, people "plough" (to use an oh so common expression amongst the Nordlings), and people can be downright bastards to each other, and The Witcher 2 isn't afraid to show you any of that.
Looking at how CDProjekt handled sex in that game, it's hard to believe that anyone ever made a big deal out of Bioware's "sex, only not really because we won't ever actually depict it, or if we do, we'll inexplicably have the characters first put on underwear that they quite possibly weren't wearing to begin with" scenes - for all that they seem to revel in the "controversy" that surrounds how they tackle the subject of sex in their games, they have a decidedly immature approach to depicting it, like they're too ashamed to fully acknowledge what it is they're purporting to show you. It's one thing to simply not ever depict sexual activities on screen while allowing them to take place off screen, and it's fine if you don't want your game to feature nudity, but to depict sex in a fashion that implies that clothing stays on throughout is just silly.
But then so is expecting us to accept that all caves and underground areas around Kirkwall have identical layouts, or that enemies can magically appear from the sky in waves, or even silly little things like how your swords/daggers/whatnot can "magically" float an inch or so from the back of your armor without anything actually holding them there[footnote]It genuinely floored me a little when I saw that the character design for Geralt in The Witcher 2 incorporated straps attaching the scabbard for his swords onto the bandoleer that he wears, and that the bandoleer itself was an independent element which the character would still wear even if you take your armor off for some reason; likewise, the straps and scabbards are all separate elements that vary from sword to sword, disappearing entirely from your bandoleer if you don't have any weapons equipped.[/footnote], and Dragon Age 2 asks us to ignore all of that; individually none of those were necessarily deal-breakers, but there is only so much a reasonable person can overlook before they start crying foul. With Dragon Age 2, Bioware definitely crossed that threshold.
I've played both. I say "The Witcher 2" hands down. Everyone knows the problems with DA2 so I don't need to rehash them. The Witcher 2 was made with love and extremely hard work. A complex and live world, beautiful lush flora and fauna, unique terrain and dungeons, characters look amazing (AND NOT COOKIE CUTTER) and it's a very detailed rich "decision based" RPG. DA2 I'll admit was "somewhat decent" but the obviously rushed game fell way short of expectations since DA:O was so amazing. Why they departed from a winning format I have no idea except that they wanted to make it less of an RPG and more of an action game to appeal to what they hoped would be a broader audience.
I will not knock people here who voted for DA2 but I do take umbrage to people who voted for DA2 who have not played Witcher 2. You're basically voting blindly and I do not believe that's fair.
I will not knock people here who voted for DA2 but I do take umbrage to people who voted for DA2 who have not played Witcher 2. You're basically voting blindly and I do not believe that's fair.
Definitely Witcher 2. Even having enjoyed the first Dragon Age I'd still choose The Witcher 2 over it. While they're both fantasy RPGs with moral ambiguity, The Witcher seems to understand what that actually means whereas the Dragon Age writers don't. Even though both games are rated M, Witcher 2 is clearly designed for older and more mature players.
And The Witcher 2 is easily one of the most mature games I've ever played. Contrast it to how Dragon Age handles their "mature" themes. Sex is played up as the reward for some dating ritual with your favorite character, blood is thrown around everywhere without discretion. It's like Bioware had a checklist of items that get an M from the ESRB and was under the impression that those items literally make a mature game. Overall it felt as if the game was fanfiction written by a teenage boy whose only notion of "mature" was using sex and violence in ways that he clearly didn't fully understand, and believing that "moral ambiguity" meant a balance of good and evil decisions, as opposed to a world where none of the decisions were based on morality.
That's where The Witcher 2 shines. It's not obsessed with its self image, or worried about controversy. The decisions you make are not based on morality, because the characters are realistically beyond worrying about what's right and wrong in the world. You work alongside bigots and rapists to bring down bigots and rapists, but none of those qualities ever really matter. Not only that, but your decisions actually matter in huge ways.
So in The Witcher 2, the mature themes were presented realistically, the story was far more interesting, writing is clearly superior and not heavy handed, the characters felt more real and less like something a machine spit out using various character traits. The graphics are absolutely stunning, zero contest there. The only thing Dragon Age 2 might have in it's favor is that its combat system is a bit more in depth, though I do enjoy The Witcher 2's combat far more.
I do think both Dragon Age games are great, I'm only highlighting their faults to show why I'd choose The Witcher 2 over Dragon Age 2.
And The Witcher 2 is easily one of the most mature games I've ever played. Contrast it to how Dragon Age handles their "mature" themes. Sex is played up as the reward for some dating ritual with your favorite character, blood is thrown around everywhere without discretion. It's like Bioware had a checklist of items that get an M from the ESRB and was under the impression that those items literally make a mature game. Overall it felt as if the game was fanfiction written by a teenage boy whose only notion of "mature" was using sex and violence in ways that he clearly didn't fully understand, and believing that "moral ambiguity" meant a balance of good and evil decisions, as opposed to a world where none of the decisions were based on morality.
That's where The Witcher 2 shines. It's not obsessed with its self image, or worried about controversy. The decisions you make are not based on morality, because the characters are realistically beyond worrying about what's right and wrong in the world. You work alongside bigots and rapists to bring down bigots and rapists, but none of those qualities ever really matter. Not only that, but your decisions actually matter in huge ways.
So in The Witcher 2, the mature themes were presented realistically, the story was far more interesting, writing is clearly superior and not heavy handed, the characters felt more real and less like something a machine spit out using various character traits. The graphics are absolutely stunning, zero contest there. The only thing Dragon Age 2 might have in it's favor is that its combat system is a bit more in depth, though I do enjoy The Witcher 2's combat far more.
I do think both Dragon Age games are great, I'm only highlighting their faults to show why I'd choose The Witcher 2 over Dragon Age 2.