Belgian_Waffles said:
If anyone really wants to know why they won't let us change our companion's armor I've figured it out...
The only reason they pulled that bullshit is so that they can sell us "alternate costume packs" later.
I'm fucking calling it right now.
And I'm sure you'll go around telling everyone how right you are when these come out.
Alternatively: They removed a relatively clunky mechanic that added relatively little to the gameplay and existed mostly just from force of RPG tradition. This allowed the characters to maintain more iconic looks, allowed them to avoid the perennial RPG problem of stupid-looking item combinations with good stats, removed some pointless inventory management "gameplay", and made it potentially easier to avoid clipping problems with clothing (which were VERY noticeable in the first game).
Since it's pretty easy to keep all of those benefits and still include some additional costumes, they'll probably release some costumes as DLC. The DLC will probably be crazy cheap and you'll probably still complain that you've somehow been "cheated". Because the costumes don't have a statistical value, you will probably also complain that this makes them somehow worthless, because aesthetics are not a part of video games.
As for the video, where to start. This is the best example of Hate Dumb I've seen in months.
(1) Linearity is not necessarily evil. In fact, the first game was basically just especially well-disguised linearity.
(2) Intros have cutscenes. This is not something new.
(3) Removing things from sequels is not always a bad thing. Claiming such is completely ludicrous. The idea is to make the sequel better and removing things can make a LOT of games better.
(4) Talking to teammates in the field has been an awkward part of Bioware games for a while now. It's easy to accidentally trigger it and it causes you to do the awkward stand-still conversation thing in places where it really doesn't make any sense.
(5) Graphical quality and aesthetics are not the same thing. The game has relatively bad graphical quality by comparison to other modern games (not to mention some serious laziness with the copied environments). On the other hand, it has some very interesting aesthetics. I found it interesting that he was showing a shot of Flemeth from the intro, who had one of the most interesting aesthetics going in the entire series (we think of her as an old lady for the most part and here she is ready for war, confirming a lot of what we found out about her in the first game!).
(6) The flash cartoons are part of the aesthetic and they don't really feel like they're just standing in for other cutscenes as in some games (I'm looking at you Mirror's Edge).
(7) Flemeth is a "slutbag sorceress"? She's still pretty obviously old, wrinkly, and grey. What we're seeing is Flemeth Goes to War. They're fleshing out the character (and we already KNEW she was slutty), not cheapening it. Every part of that costume makes sense from what we know of her and Morrigan from DAO. If they had just stuck with basic little-old-lady Flemeth, THAT would be a lack of character development.
(8) The console button-mashing sounds legitimately annoying. Good thing I'm not playing it on a console!
(9) Wait, so you want to be able to talk to your teammates more, but you hate when you end up talking to your teammates and you don't care about them?
(10) There were plenty of groups of NPCs and even solitary NPCs with absolutely nothing to say in DAO. Even worse, they would allow you to waste time "talking" to them, so you could run up only to see the word "uuuuuh" show up on the screen. Even even worse, many of them GAVE THE SAME "uuuuuh".
(11) The second episode in a series ended in a cliffhanger? SHOCKING.
(12) The end of the video drives it all home. Anyone who disagrees with him is stupid, cowardly, or is being paid to do so?
***** please.
