A thought on Dragon Age 2...

[Rath Darkblade]

WARNING! WARNING! PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS POST UNLESS YOU HAVE PLAYED DA2 ALL THE WAY THROUGH AT LEAST ONCE!

Thank you.

Anyway, as you all probably know (unless you haven't played DA2 all the way through, in which case you obviously don't and shouldn't be reading this spoiler! Shame on you! ), at the end of DA2 Anders blows up the Chantry.

So, I was thinking... would it be possible to play DA2 with a healer mage? If you do, you never need to get Anders to accompany you, and therefore, at the end of the game, you will not be present when he blows his top. Figuratively speaking. So if you're not there to witness his little act of terrorism/freedom fighting (cross out whichever doesn't apply), wouldn't it break the game?

Discuss!

[Tawmis]

Sadly not possible. You can't advance the story without recruiting Anders. And thus, even if you never use him, that means you never friended him enough to even see what he's about to do... not that if you're his best friend, or his lover, you have any idea what he's about to do... making it completely out of character... though some, *cough Andrea cough* would disagree with me!

[AndreaDraco]

Yes, I disagree!

I already expressed my opinion elsewhere, so I won't repeat myself.

[Rath Darkblade]

More thoughts...

WARNING WARNING DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED DA2 YET BLAH BLAH.

I think that one reason that DA2 is generally disliked, as opposed to DA1 (aside from the usual complaints about recycled dungeons, Anders' last-minute terrorist act/freedom fighter act and so on) is that DA1 is a self-contained story, with a well-defined beginning and end, whereas DA2 is not.

Think about it: at the end, regardless of whether you sided with the templars or the mages, you end up fighting and defeating Meredith. But do you get a celebration? Noooooooooo. Instead, you get a short video of the templars bowing to you, and then we cut to Varric and the Seeker again. No word on what the various followers have been doing after the end of the game (like DA1 did), and more than that - no satisfactory resolution as to what you (or your character) is doing at the end of the game. You simply "disappear" - where to? No answer. Why? No answer. A lot of things are left up in the air - which is not a very satisfactory ending. By comparison, at the end of DA1, you're the hero of Ferelden and (depending on how you play it) the Queen of Ferelden too (or Alistair's concubine, depending on race), and you get to choose whether you want to stay on or keep fighting, etc. So I think that this lack of resolution, for both your character and everyone else's, just ticks people off.

What do you all think, hmm?

[Datadog]

I just finished playing this last week, actually.

My thoughts:
I don't know what the story is about. It's like three mini Dragon Age episodes put together. In Episode 1, you go on an adventure into the deep roads. In Episode 2, the Qunari try to take over the city. Episode 3, the mages and templars have a fight. And then it ends on a cliffhanger - at the one moment where the game really should have started. Also, I kept expecting that Witch of the Wilds sub-plot to go somewhere - I intentionally brought her straight into the city to cause some mayhem and she never delivered. And I thought that evil relic in the mines would do more than just become a sword later. There's a lot of lost potential here.

In a way, the whole game actually reminded me of "Final Fantasy X-2". Instead of going on a whole new adventure, you instead visit a dumbed-down version of the same world, meet the same characters and races, and the plot revolves around trying to get various factions to kiss and make up.

Some good points - I do prefer the new battle system. The one from the last game really put me to sleep, so I appreciate that this game can be played without pausing every five seconds. I also like that the game comes with a "mirth" dialogue option. Going all noble or angry didn't suit my character. Also - the fact that the deep roads can be completed in under 12 hours is an amazing improvement.

[Rath Darkblade]

I just finished playing this last week, actually.

My thoughts:
I don't know what the story is about. It's like three mini Dragon Age episodes put together. In Episode 1, you go on an adventure into the deep roads. In Episode 2, the Qunari try to take over the city. Episode 3, the mages and templars have a fight. And then it ends on a cliffhanger - at the one moment where the game really should have started. Also, I kept expecting that Witch of the Wilds sub-plot to go somewhere - I intentionally brought her straight into the city to cause some mayhem and she never delivered. And I thought that evil relic in the mines would do more than just become a sword later. There's a lot of lost potential here.

In a way, the whole game actually reminded me of "Final Fantasy X-2". Instead of going on a whole new adventure, you instead visit a dumbed-down version of the same world, meet the same characters and races, and the plot revolves around trying to get various factions to kiss and make up.

Some good points - I do prefer the new battle system. The one from the last game really put me to sleep, so I appreciate that this game can be played without pausing every five seconds. I also like that the game comes with a "mirth" dialogue option. Going all noble or angry didn't suit my character. Also - the fact that the deep roads can be completed in under 12 hours is an amazing improvement.

I don't know about the new battle system. I had to keep pausing and moving the camera around, particularly when I had new enemies falling out of the sky (e.g. more spiders, more people jumping from the roof etc. - I'm sure you know what I'm referring to!) but I was first irritated, and then bored, by the fact that I was thinking "Yay, nearly finished defeating the spiders" and then MORE SPIDERS FALL OUT OF THE CEILING. Or, I'm just about done defeating the gangs in the streets at night, and then MORE GANG MEMBERS JUMP OFF THE ROOF. WTF? At first this was just annoying, but it became very boring very quickly.

As for the Deep Roads segment here... I don't know if I prefer it or not. The fact that it's relatively quick is neither here nor there, in my opinion; the Deep Roads segment here felt accidental and "tacked-on" to the main story, whereas in DA1 it was central to choosing the new Dwarf king - but still had many sub-quests to it too, which made it feel more "alive", not just "yet another place to slaughter darkspawn, whoopee". We hardly even saw much of the Deep Roads here - just one level, and then it's off to some primitive thaig we've never heard of and couldn't care less about.

What do you think?

[DeadPoolX]

I used to pause and unpause all the time in DA:O, so doing so in DA2 didn't bother me. That said, I had to pause less often in DA2, mostly because the action was more fluid. Combat was incredibly slow and clunky in DA:O, so the fast-paced action-oriented combat in DA2 was a nice change.

As for the Deep Roads... I hated that area in DA1. It had no importance to the game other than artificially increasing its length. Choosing a new Dwarf king could've been handled in a million other ways, most of which would've resulted in far less tedium.

[Tawmis]

As for the Deep Roads... I hated that area in DA1. It had no importance to the game other than artificially increasing its length. Choosing a new Dwarf king could've been handled in a million other ways, most of which would've resulted in far less tedium.

My only issue with the Deep Roads in the original...

1. It's extremely long.
2. No real change of scenery, so it gets boring and repetitive.
3. There's no vendors along the way (and all the mobs you kill, you fill up on junk armor and weapons to sell, very quickly)
4. There was no easy way to go back and out, if you wanted to do something else and ignore the Deep Roads for awhile.

I liked the whole king thing, I felt involved, just didn't like how long the Deep Roads took.

Everyone who I recommended playing DAO to, I always told them to play that area LAST.

[Rath Darkblade]

As for the Deep Roads... I hated that area in DA1. It had no importance to the game other than artificially increasing its length. Choosing a new Dwarf king could've been handled in a million other ways, most of which would've resulted in far less tedium.

My only issue with the Deep Roads in the original...

1. It's extremely long.
2. No real change of scenery, so it gets boring and repetitive.
3. There's no vendors along the way (and all the mobs you kill, you fill up on junk armor and weapons to sell, very quickly)
4. There was no easy way to go back and out, if you wanted to do something else and ignore the Deep Roads for awhile.

I liked the whole king thing, I felt involved, just didn't like how long the Deep Roads took.

Everyone who I recommended playing DAO to, I always told them to play that area LAST.

I agree with all of this, except one thing: there is ONE vendor along the way - Ruck! (Of course, you will all now say "Who?" and I will answer, "You know - that dwarf that Filda is praying to her ancestors "Please guard him and keep him safe" etc., but it's too bad that he goes absolutely nutso after drinking darkspawn blood." Anyway, if you come across Ruck and don't do anything stupid like attack him, you can trade with him. How long you can do that depends on who you have in your party - for instance, having Zevran in your party pretty much guarantees that Ruck will be killed.

As for the scenery bit... hmm. This is widely true - however, there's a slight change of scenery between Orzammar, the various thaigs and finally the Legion of the Dead bit. This is hardly unusual for the various quests though - there's hardly a change of scenery inside Redcliffe castle, or within the elf quest - there, the scenery consists of forest and more forest, followed by crypts and more crypts. Whoop-de-doo. :p

However, I agree that the Deep Roads is VERY LONG. The whole dwarf quest is easily the longest one in DA:O - you have something like close to 20 mini-quests (including clearing out the carta) before you even START the Deep Roads. But doing the Deep Roads last is a very sensible move - you'll face enemies that will kill you easily if you're low-level (hence the bounty hunters before you even get to Orzammar - they're just there to ward off low-level characters!)

Any thoughts on these?

[AndreaDraco]

While it's definitely true that the Deep Roads are long and sometimes boring, it's also true, in my opinion, that they feature one of the most powerful and disturbing scene of the entire game (Hespith's rhyme, followed by the first encounter with a Broodmother) and certainly the most morally challening end-of-segment choice (choosing between Caridin and Branka, which also meant deciding if you were going to have Golems for the final battle or not).

[Datadog]

The first time I played DA1, I was actually super-excited to get to the dwarf segment so I saved it last. I was under the assumption that by being the most alienated race, the dwarves would probably have the most interesting quest for me to go on (or maybe I was just likening it to the Mines of Moria from LOTR and hoping for something cool like that.)

It really was the length of the whole scenario that got to me, though. The quests in Orzammar aren't bad - it's just the pacing that kills the experience. There are maps in the Deep Roads that contribute very little to the plot and take a couple hours to complete, but are still integral in finding one clue to picking up on someone's trail. Considering the other three main quests can each be completed in a few short hours, the Deep Roads really do feel like the game's stalling for time in the worst way possible. Also, the difficulty's all over the place. The first time I ran into the boss there, they demolished me in seconds flat.

I'm not sure why games do this because it would be surely be a pain-in-the-neck for the developers to test, and I'm sure their reaction is always the same as ours: "people are going to hate this." There's always the question of "how many hours of game-play does the game have?" that developers always want to answer "more than forty" so they can slap a $60 price tag on it. Personally, I LOVE shorter games. 3-10 hours of game-play is perfect for my life. Of course, if want to play an RPG, I always have to expect 20-60 hours of dungeon-hopping until completed.

As far "Dungeons & Dragons"-type games go, I guess I'm just in it for the dragons.