Poll: Is there any hope Dragon Age?

[Nicholas Woodruff]

Bioware, Bioware, Bioware. We need to talk.

Remember Dragon Age: Origins? With it's originality, and deep world, fantastic quests and stories, characters that you fell in love with, and DLC that drew you in.
That's what we were looking for in Dragon Age 2.
What the hell happened?

I mean, look at Mass Effect. The original, Good. The Second, Fantastic. The Third, Better damn well live up to the hype better than Duke Nukem Forever.

Is there anything Bioware could do better to revive hope in Dragon Age as a franchise, or did they pretty well kill it with Dragon Age 2?

 

[Nicholas Woodruff]

Is that a joke about DA:2 ending abruptly?

It should have been. It really should have. It's just my crappy laptop getting over excited and doing weird stuff...

 

[FallenRainbows]

They will release another one, everyone will buy it, more people will moan. rinse, repeat.

Yeah DA:2 had some issues (copy paste much) but all round II found it a solid game, and I preferred the new combat, it was much prettier and more engaging.

Although I agree in all DA > DA2.

The series does not need saving, it is dramatic to think so. Sonic has done perfectly well despite being dead for years.

 

[loc978]

No more than Dragon Age could rekindle the flame of Baldur's Gate. Let it go, and hope the next IP works out a bit better.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I think the problems with DA:2 are going to continue to be problems, because they have to do with the writers and the business model.

Spoiler: When you have people like this on your writing team, you're pretty much screwed.

The way I see it, Dragon Age was a good game but will likely be a bad franchise. But that's alright - there are a lot of very good WRPGs coming out this year and likely in the future as well. Of course, we're likely going to see more Dragon Age, since DA2 did very well financially - better than DA1. It's just probably all going to suck.

 

[Nicholas Woodruff]

They will release another one, everyone will buy it, more people will moan. rinse, repeat.

Yeah DA:2 had some issues (copy paste much) but all round II found it a solid game, and I preferred the new combat, it was much prettier and more engaging.

Although I agree in all DA > DA2.

The series does not need saving, it is dramatic to think so. Sonic has done perfectly well despite being dead for years.

I suppose rather than save, I should have used Hope.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Is there anything Bioware could do better to save Dragon Age as a franchise, or did they pretty well kill it with Dragon Age 2?

Okay. I finished playing DA2 a couple of days ago. Here's my take:

Dragon Age 2 = Iron Man 2.

Both are very good entries that have to be compared to their better predecessor.

There is nothing wrong with Dragon Age 2. It's a great game.

It's just not DA:O.

Basically, DA2 is a massive trailer for DA3. It introduces another important character, and sets up the plot for DA3 where the character from DA:O needs to come back and fix things.

Just like how Iron Man 2 was just a massive trailer for the Avengers movie.

So yeah. Nothing wrong with DA2 other than it had to follow DA:O.

 

[Paxsis]

Well, unfortunately they can't bury DA2 and pretend it never existed... I don't think it will have killed the genre, but it took a beating with DA2, no doubt.

This I hated,
1. Buttonmashing.
2. One-two dungeons set on eternal repeat.
3. Story (or lack thereof)

On 3, it didn't have that red thread through the story. In DA:O you always knew what your purpose was, what you were up against and your odds. In DA2.. I never had that. What I thought would be the final, grand epic finale turned out to be the second part of the game, nothing more. Okay.

I'll always go with the original DA. Though I liked Merrill. Wish she'd been in Origins. (You know what I mean.)

 

[el_kabong]

The Grey Wardens?

OT: I had a good time with DA2. I definitely recognize the short-comings (copy-pasted levels, for instance). I thought that the attempt to tell the story in a different narrative structure was a bold attempt (although it leads directly to having a story that's already set and mitigates your choices and impact on the overall world, another short-coming). I think that they just need to take what was good about DA:O and DA2 and combine them, leaving out all the bad parts. There's solid potential in what we've seen, but it hasn't come to full affluence.

 

[ecoho]

Bioware, Bioware, Bioware. We need to talk.

Remember Dragon Age: Origins? With it's originality, and deep world, fantastic quests and stories, characters that you fell in love with, and DLC that drew you in.
That's what we were looking for in Dragon Age 2.
What the hell happened?

I mean, look at Mass Effect. The original, Good. The Second, Fantastic. The Third, Better damn well live up to the hype better than Duke Nukem Forever.

Is there anything Bioware could do better to save Dragon Age as a franchise, or did they pretty well kill it with Dragon Age 2?

ok here's what they need to do.
1.keep the combat from the second one it was faster and in my opinion funner then the first
2. make a better tactics menu,the one they have is not very user friendly( also pretty hard to find on a console)
3.bring back the inventory from the first game and the dam inspect items before you pick them up.
4.bring back the warden make hawke a companion (or make it your choice i guess for those who never played the first) i want my dam elf mage and his lovly and demonic bride morigan back like now.
5.varic and ogrin(ohgrin?) ah screw it the dwarves more of them preferably together.
6. longer just make the next game longer.

if all these steps are taken it will be saved

BTW: there were repeating environments in DA:O its just that there were like 3 6 more of them(much larger and longer game)

 

[Pearwood]

Where's the "I thought DA2 was alright option"? Bit of a biased poll.

 

[electric_warrior]

One bad game does not kill a franchise. In fact, it wasn't even bad, it just failed to meet expectations. They can easily salvage it, they just need to put more time and money into it.

 

[Kakujin]

They might be able to save it, but I wasn't that blown away with the first one either, so not sure it is worth saving. With Mass Effect on the other hand, they made one brilliant game, and then they realized they wanted to make a more dialogue heavy Gears of War....

 

[MorsePacific]

I liked Dragon Age: Origins, even though I thought it was boring to a painful extent. I'm not particularly strategic in games, so the combat style didn't suit me at all. I didn't like micromanaging equipment, I hated that my character had no voice, and I really didn't get attached to the characters, yet I still thought it was a very good game.

Then Dragon Age 2 came out and I was even more happy. The combat reminded me of Mass Effect 2, which easily ranks as one of my favorite games of all times, I finally had a character I could invest in (specifically Varric), and Hawke felt like he really had a personality. The RPG elements were severely cut down, which certainly helped my hatred of the micromanaging I had to do in DA:O, and overall I loved it. Sure, it had some problems. All of the enemies were virtually the same, the romance options were absolute garbage, the copy-pasting of terrain made it seem very boring, but I still enjoyed it overall.

With a few tweaks, I feel like Bioware could very easily pull out a fantastic third game from the series.

 

[dangoball]

Well since DA is just something to kill time between the big boy/girl ______ Shepard adventures, I don't really think it needs saving. It's there to kill time and provide a fantasy setting when waiting for the sci-fi big shot and it does that well, so why fix what's not broken... much.

 

[Lord Of Cyberia]

As long as they, y'know, ACTUALLY BALANCE THE NEXT ONE, I'll probably be okay. I still have nightmares about rogues having more health than Fighters, and dealing hundreds of times more damage than mages. *shudder*

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Of course there's a way to save Dragon Ages... crucify all the senior team leaders on the project and set them around the perimeter of the carpark as a warning. Hmmm... might want to check the applicable labour laws before doing it though.