Poll: Dragon Age 2 was it that bad?

[Catie Caraco]

As a sidebar, I don't understand who these people are that consider the first Dragon Age some manner of holy grail of RPGs, it wasn't all that good. Above average, sure. But not stellar.

That is your opinion and I entirely disagree with it. Perhaps it's not the "holy grail", but it is certainly the best rpg I've ever played. True, for awhile I was stuck in the Final Fantasy camp, but trying other rpgs have never compared. I can't beat Fable or Fable 2, I lose interest real fast, and the excuse for romance in that game is pathetic. Tried Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion, and got so overwhelmed by the size of the world and sidequests I forgot my main objective and stopped playing. A solo career is boring, too.

Origins had a decent character customization level which player made mods has greatly expanded. The different Origin stories and races provided a deep level of role play ability. My elven mage is nothing like my human mage and nothing like my city elf, who is nothing like my Dalish elf, and so on and so forth. I felt totally immersed in Ferelden. I love the companions, all of them, and have a fierce loyalty to Alistair. The character banter is just... some of the best writing I've ever come across. My parents became so engaged watching me play that I had to narrate my dialogue choices in case they couldn't see the screen. They cheered when I finally killed Loghain, and when I defeated the Archdemon. And they've never really enjoyed my playing video games in the living room or without headphones because it "sounds annoying".

So you know what? I take it back. Origins IS a Holy Grail to me, and I'd wager to dozens of other gamers. It led me to other great Bioware titles like Mass Effect, and boy was I shocked when I found out Jade Empire was made by them. For them to follow Fantastic with Mediocre is what bothers me. And every other Bioware title I've played has been at least Great.

 

[KaWaiiTSuKI]

It's my personal favourite game I've played all year so far and I've played... pretty much every major release.
Maybe I just have simple tastes or I'm an idiot but... I loved it :3

 

[duowolf]

I played through it 4 times so far so you could say I loved it

 

[Random Argument Man]

It could've been more, but it isn't the worst thing that came around.

In my opinion, the original Dragon Age wasn't that great. Getting every army seems a bit of a chore and every situation seemed like a "Well, we could help you, but you need to fix our crisis that just started recently first".

Note* Is it me or do you think that the other companions should've been people from other origins?

 

[IkeGreil29]

The biggest problem these days is Mob Mentality. We tend to not use our own sense of what's good and what's bad, we just go with whatever X or Y told us. And THEN we blow it out of proportion.
I've liked it so far. My brother liked it. We both liked DA:O. It does feel lackluster, but I wouldn't say I regret the purchase. What puzzles me about both of them is the insane amount of bugs (also in Awakening) that I actually ran into. It wasn't like other games where I never ran into them or maybe once in a million playthroughs. What you can notice though is EA's effect on poor old BioWare.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Snip

I don't find a character that is who he is or is who she is to be cliche. I actually find that when a character changes (usually from random or really meaningless occurrences, and then oh boy they are different, ooh they saw the light and they worked through the problems entirely and softened up or became a man) that is really unrealistic and not that enjoyable in a character. The problem these days is that too many people love the whole redemption or turned one's life around thing.

The character development doesn't only come from a character changing who they are or what they are like. A character can develop without that. Development can come when the character is already out in the open and you know what they are. What DA2 does is the more subtle and much better job of developing a character from their past and showing you why they are like they are.

The changing ones character thing is very much a fictional thing. From what I have seen in my life, I have seen maybe one person change who they are entirely(like what you expect and what you said happens in Origins), and I have encountered and I've got to know hundreds of people and even if you don't know people you can see people in news stories and such, what they are like and even though they say they will change or do something different, they don't.

A people changing themselves mostly or completely from what they were isn't an everyday occurrence. That is why what happens in Origins is so off. That is why I find the so called "cliche" characters of Merrill and Varric so refreshing, they are what they are and I know the structure of their characters will stay strong and not unpredictably change.

I would have hated BioWare if they made Varric change, that at first he was the funny man and then over the course of the game he becomes some somber stick in the mud that finds no humor in life anymore instead stays silent hide how he feels instead of making jokes. BioWare knows what they are doing. They answered the question, why can't the funny man stay funny? Well the answer, he can and he will. And the naive girl can stay that way.

More on Merrill, I would say that BioWare didn't know they were going to give her a bigger part when they created her for Origins, but when they did find they would use her, they changed her because the change was better suited for what they wanted, but they couldn't create a new character for.

Also on the whole awkwardness and weird way she acts about Hawke. It is the ever present occurrence that when a person falls in love or has a crush on a person, they become a totally different person. It may sound cliche, but it happens all the time in real life. The smart sturdy man that has everything together and is usually fearless, becomes a blubbering idiot when he is near or around a girl he likes, same for the ladies. I believe it is really only the one thing that can change a person. Who knows, something might have happened to Merrill in between Origins and DA2, and she isn't like she was, and she changes more when Hawke comes along.

 

[Trig0n]

I felt it was rather good actually. It had it's shinign moments and the combat was an upgrade from the first game in my opinion, however the repetitive dungeons got on my nerves a bit.

Quest log: Now go into that slaver den and rescue those folks.
Me: Wasn't this a spider nest or something last time I was here?
Quest log: Shut it and kill the slavers.

 

[kasperbbs]

It wasnt a bad game but i expected more. I think most people did and thats why it received so many negative comments. With all its bugs and repetitive environments it was still a lot better than most rpgs that i have played.

 

[IkeGreil29]

SNIP

You miss (I am guessing by your username, I apologize in advance just in case) are awesome at describing how good it was.

 

[NickCaligo42]

DA2 is terrible, as an RPG, as an action game. Haven't played much Dragon Age, can't call myself much of a fan, but DA2 is probably one of the worst, least enjoyable, sloppiest games I've ever played.

 

[Therumancer]

I personally felt it was a bastardized insult to the original game. The story was bad and the narrative is schizophrenic at best. The combat was dull and repetitive. The only thing i kind of liked was naming the main character Mike but the gag got old rather quickly.

Well, a big part of the problem with it was that it was underwhelming in comparison to the first game. Not only did you have little choice over the creation of your character, no racial choice, or multiple origins, but the game constantly recycled the same enviroments. The combat was a massive joke, dumbed down to a pathetic brawler, despite all comments about tactics in the loading screens and such you pretty much had waves of guys spawning on you or dropping down from the sky/rooftops in a way that it wasn't even practical to do things like set formations, keep mages clear, and other things, nor was it paticularly nessicary. Given the way the bad guys spawned any kind of fight preparation was impossible as well, you can be just walking along, hit an empty room or hallway and suddenly have a mini-boss spider the size of an elephant literally appear on top of you.

I will say that part of the harsh reception it's gotten is not just that the game was simply put junky, but because of the way Bioware treated the fan base. If you were following the development of the game, you would know that Bioware ASKED the fan base if having a single hero called Hawke who would be predetermined as human with a predetermined backround (ie no origin selection) was okay with the fan base. Bioware received an overwhelmingly negative response to that query, with the best responses generally being in the "we trust Bioware" catagory. Bioware turned around and pretty much said that the idea had an overwhelmingly positive response, and did things that way, leading a lot of people to take a "well, why bother to ask the fans if your going to ignore them and do whatever you want anyway?". There as a lot of bad blood over this before the game ever came out, and I think a lot of fanboys miss the point that it's not just the desician itself but the way it was handled and the entire game of asking the fan base, and then lying about the response received.

EA/Bioware trying to pump up the metascore ratings when they game was being badly reviewed by users, as opposed to the pro-reviewers they pay off also didn't help matters, even if only one guy was caught, that ensured the already bitter taste in people's mouthes just got worse.

The bottom line is that the game itself was a badly designed reck, and the company's own actions upset a lot of their fans in relation to the game. Perhaps it would have been taken as simply a sub-par effort from Bioware (not every game can be a winner, and frankly Bioware DOES have a lot on it's plate, no longer focusing like a laser on one product at a time) had it not been for their behavior.

Truthfully I will say that right now Bioware is rapidly on it's way to becoming a publisher reviled with the general hatred only reserved for publishers. I say this because while they have a vocal army of fanboys still, a lot of things they are doing, or connected to, are hardly receiving a positive response. Some pretty big cracks are forming in their relationship with the consumer base. A fairly recent example would be how at E3 the guy doing the "Old Republic Online" gameplay demo/podcast made comments about how they "planned to give the release date, but decided it would be funnier not to", intended jokingly or not that comment in connection with what a lot of people see as chain jerking (and saw even more so as chain jerking before the recent pre-orders) irritated a lot of people due to the fact that even as a joke it does tend to show a certain degree of contempt. "Contempt for the fans" is one thing when your being an exagerratedly acidic game critic with no direct involvement in the industry like Yahtzee, it's a little differant in cases like this.

See, I see Bioware rapidly becoming a company where it's going to be a situation where people loathe the company, but like the games... at least for a while. As time goes on I think they are becoming detached from the core audience that made them, and it's going to be one of those companies where eventually people will talk about them in terms of a group of arrogant schmucks who used to be good. It's not too late to reverse the path of course, it's just something to consider. The rabid fanboys out there right now who weren't irritated by things like the Hawke incident, or the E3 comments might not see it, but that will probably last until Bioware does something that they don't like, then a lot of these previous incidents they don't care about will tend to click. When finally noticed by fans, even a few at a time, a pattern of behavior can be difficult for a company to change or redeem themselves from, and when hostility builds gradually it becomes easy to find yourself one day wondering "wow, when did that minority of people suddenly become the overwhelming majority".

"Dragon Age 2" as a game and developer behavior kind of represents a sort of signpost of what Bioware is in danger of becoming.

 

[AlwaystheUnlucky]

The only thing i kind of liked was naming the main character Mike but the gag got old rather quickly.

...I see what you did there. Heh heh. Mike Hawke.

OT: I personally enjoyed it. I felt the schizophrenic approach was justified actually, knowing how much of an unreliable narrator Varric is. The characterization was great, and everything made sense in context.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Snip

Or play Awakening. Both are options.

I'll be honest, playing 1 makes me not want to play the other. You know how playing some games will make you think "I'm over this now, I want something similar though." eg. Nothing much left to achieve in Saints Row series, why not play GTA: San Andreas?
Getting tired of grinding in Pokemon White, go back and visit ol' Charmander again.

One thing that stands me a part from the people that bash Dragon Age 2 is that I don't entirely, if at all, judge a game in a series based on what the other one was like.

If I had been like those people, I would have canceled my pre-order for DA2, because I bought and started playing Origins to get ready for DA2, but stopped. I found it interesting in some ways, but I just couldn't continue because the gameplay was so slow, grating, and most times boring. But, I didn't cancel my pre-order because I had faith that BioWare might fix those problems in DA2 and from what I saw of previews, it looked like they had. Then when I got my hands on my pre-order copy, I found my thoughts were right.

I thoroughly enjoyed DA2. The story was a nice flowing stream of water that occasionally changed direction, going around a bend back where it came and then changing back and going on course.

The story of DA: Origins is a slow dripping broken bathroom faucet. You turn the knob and from reason nothing comes out. Then when you try and do something and try to make it work properly, you turn the knob and it goes crazy, spurting water in every direction and getting you all wet and miserable, and then it slows and goes to a slow occasional drop.

If anything DA2 has made me want to suffer through DA: Origins and all the DLC, so that I can understand DA2 more, and things that might come up in the third one to come.

 

[Catie Caraco]

SNIP

You miss (I am guessing by your username, I apologize in advance just in case) are awesome at describing how good it was.

lol you're right, I am a she. Thank you very much for the complement. It made me smile. ^_^

 

[Arisato-kun]

It wasn't Bioware's best or anything but it's still one of the better games I've played. It really didn't deserve all the shit it was getting. My only real issue was the overuse of environments but with enough small tweaks they could've even got away with that.

Besides for all the mediocre components that are in the game the character of The Arishok makes up for absolutely all of it.

 

[axeman157]

They destroyed the RPG element with more of a beat-em up element.

 

[Xanthious]

I think you are doing a massive disservice to shit by comparing it to Dragon Age 2. Shit deserves far better than that.

I guess though if you need something AWESOME to happen every time you press a button (Button Awesome! Button Awesome!) and the idea of "Squee'ing" over how cute the elf is is your cup of tea and you wear a helmet throughout your daily activities, like eating breakfast, then hell maybe Dragon Age 2 could be considered enjoyable. Hell you can just sit around all nice and safe in your helmet squee'ing til you can't squee anymore and watching a parade of awesome happen everytime you press a button . . . . right up until you get distracted by pudding, or something shiny like keys or marbles.

 

[Happy Sock Puppet]

I played the 360 version:

Awkward, segmented storyline.

The glitches, exploits and bugs that any amount of playtesting would have discovered.

The the the the the the the the the the the the the the repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated repeated environments environments environments environments environments environments environments environments environments.

 

[theevilgenius60]

I liked it. The thing that would have made it better is just a name. Don't call that Dragon Age 2, all that leads to is disappointment that it wasn't as great as origins and awakening. Call it something like The Rise of Hawke: an adventure in the Dragon Age universe,or something like that. It just didn't feel as urgent as origins or even awakening. Literally, all it was about was Hawke going from no name scrub to bad ass Viscount. If they would have been more open about that in the title, then I believe there wouldn't be as much complaining about it.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Snip

The problem is that too many gamers these days have the mentality that the developers should be making the games exactly how they want them, that the developer shouldn't think about what other people might want, or even what the developer wants to create.

If BioWare has a problem it is that they both want to make the game they want to make and please all the rabid foaming at the mouth fans (not an exaggeration as seen from the seriously unfair user reviews on Metcritic) at the same time.

They obviously wanted to do something different in the Dragon Age universe, to tell a different story in a different way. Their mistake was to ask fans what they what in another Dragon Age game, because with how fans usually are, they are unrefined and unmoving. The majority of them will blurt out something to the effect, "Ugh, more Origins, more Origins, we like Warden. Wooo, my Elf was awesome!! Dwarfs rock!!! What weirdo wants to play as a human." Truthfully, most fans don't want something that is new and refreshing, and even if certain things are broken in a game and in the past they use to complain about it, once the developer changes the game and creates a fresh story and fixes the problems of the previous game, the fans go all, "Everything from the last game was fine." And despite that BioWare for the most part work incredibly hard to bring something new and fresh, the "fans" get all angry because BioWare didn't make a game exactly like the first one, so they say, "BioWare was lazy".

The only problem in the game was the dungeons, and that wasn't because BioWare was lazy, that was because of EA rushing development. Besides not making a the sequel exactly like the first, isn't being lazy. They made something new, fixed broken mechanics, worked in much better graphics, and didn't create the same old story type from Origins. That is working one's ass off, not being lazy.

Heck, I don't blame them for trying to pump their score. 95% of the flack they got from user reviews was unwarranted and uncalled for. I thought the game was at least a 9 out of 10 and I was going to give it a 9 on Metacritic, but when I saw how crazy people were acting, I gave it a 10 to do my part to help BioWare.

But back to what I was saying, BioWare needs to forget fans. They need to just create the games they want to create, to tell the stories they want to tell.

This whole fans vote on what femshep should look like is stupid. BioWare should just create one the team agrees on, and when the time comes in game, the player will choose what their femshep will look like.

I've done a good bit of story writing, and if I ever became an author of a best selling series and there was some kind of cult following for a character and people loved him and wanted him to live throughout the whole series, but I originally planned to violently kill him off, I would kill him off, I'd probably be more violent with the death to spite the cult following, because that is how I planned the story to go.

BioWare's plan wasn't for an entirely open story like Origins, the wanted to tell the story of a certain human. The difference comes from what you make him look like, if he/she is a mage, warrior, or rogue, and what the personality is like, nice, a wise cracking neutral, or forceful and mean person. An RPG like Dragon Age, really doesn't need 1 million character choices and the village well too be great. It is about the story BioWare wants to tell. If BioWare wants to start narrowing the choices on what can happen, that just means they have a plan that makes it so that only a few choices will work.

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To BioWare, forget the fan pleasing. Ignore the forums except for tech problems, and make the games you want to make. Some people will like them, some love, some indifferent, some hate. Haters don't mean you did something wrong, it just means you did something they didn't like. Pay attention to the people that still like what you make and the new fans, and when you do something that makes them mad, keep going and stick with the people that still like what you are doing and again the new comers.

Make what you want to create BioWare, I support you, Dragon Age 2 was awesome.