Poll: Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect?

[Blindrooster]

This poll tears me apart. I can't vote, i love them both. is Kotor an option???

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Eh, Dragon Age's combat was interesting but broke the flow of the gameplay. Mass Effect's combat was well designed and intuitive, if a little easy, and it didn't bring the game to a complete halt everytime you entered a room.

Mass Effect also wins out on graphics as well as art design. Dragon Age had functional graphics and an occasionally annoying camera with really quite generic art design.

Story-wise, Dragon Age is a little better. It also had far better side-quests.

They're quite even, but I gave the edge to ME just because it was more ambitious.

now i agree with everything you said, but just wanted to point out ME is set in a futuristic era where everything is smooth and straight, so the graphics were easier to uphold (make em look good) while dragons age has the armor/scenery/different shades and things all over the place

just pointing it out, not disagreeing with you

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

Mass Effect was a more complete experience, though I think I liked the world of Dragon Age slightly more. You never really fully understand how much a talking player character means until it's taken away from you. My character in Dragon Age feels like a lifeless mannequin or something. He just stands there dumbly as people die in front of him and beg him not to kill their children.

 

[veloper]

It's a choice between a weak shooter with stats, or a rare full party control RTWP.

Dragon Age wins.

 

[Naughty MrPeeps]

I was just pondering to myself, which game would the escapist forum prefer out of these two.

I have heard that Dragon Age is preferred now by many gamers. But, I still think, since it was one of the first games available on the 360, Mass Effect deserves a higher score.

8/10

Mass Effect /deserves/ a higher score because it was one of the first games out on the 360? That makes no sense.

I would have to give my vote to Dragon Age. At least the side quests in DA were interesting while the side quests in Mass Effect were all about visiting "different" planets in a glorified treasure hunt. Never mind that the Mass Effect version of dungeons was the same facility without even so much as a reskin to make it slightly more interesting.

Mass Effect had a good, short story and will be successful as the trilogy gets fleshed out but Dragon Age is infinitely deeper. Also keep in mind that the PC version of DA consistently gets rated higher than its console ports.

I phrased it wrong. I mean, considering that it was one of the first games to be released on the 360, it should be taken into consideration.

 

[jthm]

snip

I'd say you make a good case for ME except for the fact that you have almost NO control over your party members, whereas in DAO you have complete control if you want it, or you can set up a list of instructions to tell them how to behave. This alone gives DAO a nudge over ME in my opinion.

Well, the fact that you have a party in both games kind of masks the fact that the combat style and its relationship with your 'team' in each game is influenced by two different traditions. Mass Effect draws more from the tactical team based shooter genre (the only game I've played that is similar was that brilliant Star Wars clone commando shooter, but I believe there are some games with Tom Clancy slapped on the front too) where you give general commands to your friends but don't 'jump' into their body.

DA:O on the other hand, draws more from the D&D tradition where you do have a party whose body you can jump into and give detailed commands for, drawing from the Black Isle games and Obsidian's NWN2. The two traditions are completely different and have separate goals in mind, you shouldn't try to compare them directly.

Personally, I like ME's system more because you stay more in touch with your central character and he/she doesn't become just another person you're controlling. I had this problem a bit in DA:O where I was spending most of my time controlling Morrigan because I had to micromanage her spells and I sort of lost touch with my main character. In NWN2, it was even worse because you had a party of 5 or 6 waltzing around with you. No such danger in ME, which is good because it brings you closer to the Shepherd you create.

I didn't feel in touch at all with Shepherd, I felt the character lacked any real personality for most of the game and as such I didn't want to control him. Wrex and the gray guy were the only ones I really thought had any character development.

I get what you're saying about hailing from the tactical shooter tradition, but even in the first Socom (PS2) at least I could tell my allies to hold fire, sneak past, shoot THIS enemy not THAT enemy. Not to mention the inventory system in DAO is by far superior or that the parts with the Mako made me want to send letter bombs disguised as fanmail to bioware.