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Dragon Age II |OT| The Revenge of Shit Mountain
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
subversus said:
Lazy design, thats a laugh. It might not be horribly unique but the Dragon Age universe is extremely cohesive and thats not always an easy task. Infinity Blade looks like mishmash of over the top bad art, none of it matches, if not for the samey looking PC character in his space armor it wouldnt be clear that any of that came from the same game.
Dragon Age isnt gonna get any awards for creativity but all the designs looked like they belonged in that world and looked believable, except for the hurlock's armor from DA2, faces were great but uhh that armor was as bad as that Infinity Blade crap. Theres a hell of a lot more to art design than making shit look "cool." It also has to make sense and compliment everything else in the game. If you just start drawing crazy shit in an attempt to make everything look extreme and super dramatic its gonna just look like shit if theres no overarching theme and style that brings it all together.
DJ_Lae
Member
Just finished it (as a duel-wielding rogue) - enjoyed it, thought the repetition in the quests gets a bit much after a while.
Also, somehow I managed to completely miss Isabella, which would have added a bit of time to my final clock (~24-25 hours, not including deaths). Embarassingly, my first time through ME2 I missed Legion, so this seems to be a trend for me with Bioware games.
Game became much more enjoyable when I stopped comparing it to the first.
Also, somehow I managed to completely miss Isabella, which would have added a bit of time to my final clock (~24-25 hours, not including deaths). Embarassingly, my first time through ME2 I missed Legion, so this seems to be a trend for me with Bioware games.
Game became much more enjoyable when I stopped comparing it to the first.
Jay Shadow
Member
HixxSAFC said:
Never romanced her and when I told her she had to give it up she double crossed me and never returned for the rest of the game.
So puzzled by the loot 'system' (I use that word loosely) in this game. If you're the only one who can equip armor (why is that again?), why on earth are there armor drops that you would never equip for your class, i.e. ones that require high dexterity or strength if you're a Mage? Or high willpower/magic when you're a Warrior?
Why not have the option to set that stuff to auto-junk? Why even have a bunch of meaningless junk that you pick up that you can only sell (that literally goes into its own category as vendor trash)? Why not just have you pick up money instead of the dog-and-pony act where it takes up inventory space and you have to go to a vendor and click on a "sell junk" button to get rid of it.
So many incomprehensible design decisions in this game.
Why not have the option to set that stuff to auto-junk? Why even have a bunch of meaningless junk that you pick up that you can only sell (that literally goes into its own category as vendor trash)? Why not just have you pick up money instead of the dog-and-pony act where it takes up inventory space and you have to go to a vendor and click on a "sell junk" button to get rid of it.
So many incomprehensible design decisions in this game.
Wiggum2007
Junior Member
Kyoufu said:
How do you even miss out on Legion? I thought you got him on one of the required main story quests.
FINALBOSS said:
Kyoufu said:
Ickman3400 said:
Nope, I really did everything I could in 22 hours. Played on Normal as a Warrior reached level 22 in the end. I skip the dialogue when I finish reading the line as I can't be bothered listening to the voice acting unless I think it's gonna be funny.
Anyways, time to start an angry fem-Hawke now since the female version always seems better in Bioware games :3
X-Frame said:
Here's mine-
http://twitpic.com/480ipz
Worked from the first non-Hawke pre-set. Also, if you have the Black Emporium then it's easy to adjust it throughout the game.
lastplayed
Member
X-Frame said:
Here's mine, although she's more of a blonde/redhead.
Lostconfused
Member
Bagh character customization options suck this time around. Might as well just stick to the default Hawke face at all times.
Ickman3400
Banned
Xamdou said:
3 Acts, and you can buy a potion in the black emporium dlc that resets attributes and abilities to anyone who drinks it
Lostconfused
Member
I tried to play around with FemHawke options and couldn't get any satisfactory results compared to Origins. But that's one problem that moders will probably be able to fix.Patryn said:
Ickman3400
Banned
CrazyDude said:
Hard to say really. Most people seem to complete Act 1 within 15-20 hours but the last 2 are definitely shorter, less side quests to do in each.
Took me 32 hours to beat on normal doing almost every quest I found.
Lostconfused
Member
Man the ending of Origins is just sooo much more epic than DA2.
Edit:
Less is more, at least for me I guess. With all the huge swarms of enemies, none of the fights really looked as incredible as say this
Edit2:
Or what they did with Sandal. Great job Bioware you just explained the joke. You do realize that you ruined it by doing that right, right?
Edit3:
Clearly the design of the mabari in Origins was entirely intentional. But its just one more thing that got changed for the sequel without a good reason.
Edit4:
Also DA2 is lacking in those giant middle finger screw you I hate you so much abilities. Namely stuff like Hex of Misdirection and Hex of Mortality. Both of those could ruin your day completely if you weren't pay attention. Of course there are a few OP abilities in DA2 but unintentionally so. Like Gravity Well for Example. Where near its center get trapped in it for the full duration and most of the time AI is dumb enough to run right into it.
Edit:
Less is more, at least for me I guess. With all the huge swarms of enemies, none of the fights really looked as incredible as say this
Edit2:
Or what they did with Sandal. Great job Bioware you just explained the joke. You do realize that you ruined it by doing that right, right?
Edit3:
Clearly the design of the mabari in Origins was entirely intentional. But its just one more thing that got changed for the sequel without a good reason.
Edit4:
Also DA2 is lacking in those giant middle finger screw you I hate you so much abilities. Namely stuff like Hex of Misdirection and Hex of Mortality. Both of those could ruin your day completely if you weren't pay attention. Of course there are a few OP abilities in DA2 but unintentionally so. Like Gravity Well for Example. Where near its center get trapped in it for the full duration and most of the time AI is dumb enough to run right into it.
Sir Garbageman
Member
WOW, ACT II spoilers
they offed Hawke's Mom in the most random way possible. Serial killer wanted her face? What?
Enduin said:
This post made me lol. It's fantasy, you can do any overarching mythology to justify any design. They could do it in Murcoock or Zelazny style but they did what they did. I understand that there are a lot of fans of generic "cohesive" looking fantasy though.
HadesGigas
Member
What is up with this game and giving me amulets? I find at probably twice as many of them as I do belts or rings.
You'd think rings would be the more common thing since you can equip two of them on each person...
You'd think rings would be the more common thing since you can equip two of them on each person...
subversus said:
Youre totally missing the point, its not about explaining away things to justify random crap, and its not that you cant make over the top unique characters and creatures, its that you have to have them make sense in that world and everything else in it, visually not through poor explanations to patch it in there. When a game has bad art design things in the game can become jarring to the player because they clash with the rest of the world and seem unrealistic, relative to their setting, and it removes the player from the game.
Look at a game like Zeno Clash, everything about that game is bizarre and over the top, but it all fits together and compliments the other weird shit around it. Its not just some collage of unique and abstract things slapped together, it was a thoughtfully constructed world thats batshit crazy, but within its own confines seems real and plausible.
I dont prefer generic fantasy I just prefer well designed fantasy, and in most cases people usually fail at creating that.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Lostconfused said:
lastplayed
Member
Lostconfused said:
Heh, I love it when ogres grab and smack the hell out of you.
And you can also see Zevran doing an ogre takedown move, right in the middle of the action. It's a shame DA2 reverted to a cutscene.
GrandHarrier
Member
I know I may get some flak from some quarters of this discussion, but I really enjoy some of the multi-phase boss battles in this game. Maybe it is the former and still sometimes-MMO player inside of me, but I am usually willing to forgive the design or "absurdity" of it, a little bit, for a longer more tactical and satisfying experience.
In particular,
. More of these in DA3, please.
I missed the other two optional boss fights. So going to get those in my second playthrough.
In particular,
I really enjoyed the Vartrell, the High Dragon and the Orsino / Meredith fights.
I missed the other two optional boss fights. So going to get those in my second playthrough.
njean777 said:
I thought that was actually one of the easier mass brawls.
The Arishok basically stood their buffing for the whole fight, so mopped up all the mages asap and then just AoE'd his buddies down, had Aveline keep the Arishok busy while doing all of that and then just nuke him down.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
GrandHarrier said:
HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.
Spat_triate
Member
Who is this
guy everyone keeps talking about?
Fenris
I lost my brother in the deeproads and have no 2H warrior companions 
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Spat_triate said:Who is thisguy everyone keeps talking about?Fenris
I lost my brother in the deeproads and have no 2H warrior companions
He's a character you meet on a sidequest. I think you should be meeting him soon. Elf Warrior, two hander. Looks straight out of an anime.
While I find them fairly disposable, they are quick. The kind of thing you finish before you even notice you start. In that way it's easy to just keep moving from one to the next, or to head knee deep into quests you don't know much about because you know it will be over in the next 10 minutes.Relix said:
It actually reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy XIII. It's a way to keep the player hooked, but it lacks a lot of substance to me without extended dungeon crawling that really pushes your party to its limits. RPGs with resources always available and full health for every battle tend to feel very tame to me. They definitely lack a hard tension I find to be readily available in other games of the genre.