I know a lot of people are tired of all the DA2 hate/debate, but I can't get enough of it. See, EA/Bioware, like a lot of modern pubs/devs, took a lot of things for granted with DA2. Bad things. Traditionally, they've gotten away with this shit. Seems like DA2, for whatever reason, is the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm thankful for that, and I'll try to explain why.
Let's get the most obvious bit out of the way; the game was horribly rushed. You can see it in the design shortcuts ("waves"...), the shamelessly reused assets, the inconsistent modeling (Bethany's hands...), and the overall lack of content compared to the first game. Whether you prefer the sequel or not, you can't really argue that DA1 had significantly more raw "stuff". Was that a product of an extra three years in development? Of course. But that's the point, isn't it? For whatever reason, publishers have been leaning on devs to finish projects unreasonably fast, and the end result is inferior games. I hope DA2 represents some actual fucking pushback on this issue. It'd be nice to send a very public and (hopefully) financial message to EA (and the like) that we want polished, fleshed-out products - not super-rushed sequels.
That brings me to my second point. Devs/pubs have this incessant need to expand their audience (aka sales), and the "best" way to accomplish this is through broadening the appeal of the product. This means changing it, and not always for the best. Frequently, it means removing whole aspects of the original title in order to garner a new fanbase - and relying on the unwavering loyalty of your existing fanbase, whom you expect to support your game based on name recognition and even nostalgia. And that's bullshit. If you're going to call something Dragon Age while removing a decent chunk of what defined the original game, you absolutely deserve a ton of hate. You listened to the board members who told you to keep the same IP while drastically altering the product because it's a "no risk" proposition for them. People who liked the first game will buy the second, and maybe some new people will, too. Win/win, right? Sure it is, if you endorse dishonesty as a policy.
TLDR version: if they're going to hijack IPs for mass consumption AND rush them out the door with no concern for quality, it's up to the community to call them on that shit. They do that stuff because it makes them more money. If a bunch of nasty word-of-mouth and user-reviews puts a big enough dent in their sales, there's a chance they might not pull that bs on their future projects. Even if you love DA2, you have to acknowledge that it represents some pretty negative trends in this industry. Flying in the face of those trends means more good games for all of us.
Remember when they tried to turn Cole of InFamous into a fucking frat boy? People went nuts and got them to change it back. We need more of that to keep the goddamn board members and focus groups out of our creative spaces.
So by all means, ***** away.
