Dragon Age 3

I've seen the lead designer saying that the battle system was fine and Act III was complete, but the former is a matter of opinion and his latter opinion doesn't matter much since he's not a writer. Nothing saying that the glitches were intended.

edited 21st May '11 5:36:54 AM by lrrose

Well, let's hope Dragon Age 3 is bad enough to put DA out of its misery. From EA, we've gotten the wonderful news that

A. The game will most likely have competitive multiplayer...

B. The DA IP is planned to be a yearly release like COD.

Say it with me now.

Darth Vader: DO NOT WANT!

edited 21st May '11 6:33:10 AM by Archereon

Nope,

Do want

Really, people hate the second one too much

I prefer the second one over the first one, its less..... clicheristic

I prefer neither. Dragon Age was a [[Understatement MASSIVE]] disappointment for me. It didn't help that I had played Mass Effect 2 and read A Game Of Thrones in the prior month, but even then there's a big gap in quality between the Bioware that's in Canada and Bioware Houston, is it?

My friend seems to dislike the combat and that the "Its advertised as 100h game, but the actual game is 7h, you get 100h by playing it through on different paths multiple times" or something like that in the first game.

edited 21st May '11 11:05:49 AM by SpookyMask

Huh? I average 25 hours in Origins alone, 21 when I skip sidequests.

Damn you move fast then. My average DA playthrough is about 30 hours without sidequests, 50+ with them.

Well I do tend to read the subtitles ahead of where the characters speak then skip during conversations, so that might be a reason. My first playthrough put me around 32 hours I believe.

My first playthrough was about....70 hours. My second, well it clocked in around 80 or 90 I don't remember.

Is that just origins or origins+awakening+dlc? If it's just Origins...damn.

Mine is just Origins. Throwing in Awakening+DLC and you get around the 50 hour mark.

I found that DA 2 wasn't all that short, maybe 30-40 hours doing almost every sidequest for me.

Yeah, that was why I was confused at what the heck she was talking about o-o

DA 2 also had some big fucking pacing issues. The prologue is very well done but the first act feels like it drags on forever. two was alright, still a bit lean for my tastes and the third act felt shorter then the prologue.

EDIT: I need to remember to sign out of this sock puppet!

edited 21st May '11 10:47:28 PM by TheLordJesusChrist

That is just Origins, add another 10-15 hours for awakening.

Things that could have been fixed with more time:

• More dungeon environments (obviously)
• Better designed encounters (Simply having more than 3 types of enemies and giving them a bit of variation when it comes to scripts/tactics, like at least LT and Boss enemies using similar types of abilities as you do would have helped)
• More complex quest chains, fleshing out Act 3 (especially Orsino)

What they really needed was more quests involving the Circle. We needed to see exactly what Meredith and Orsino were doing instead of being just told about it.

The storyline wasn't bad, but it just wasn't quite up to snuff. DAO had similar problems, but there was enough variety to distract you from it.

And since people seems to be ranking Bioware games, here's my list. [[Which is of course the only true and objective ranking of the games.]]

1. Baldurs Gate 2: Shadows of Amn/Throne of Bhaal It's bar none the best RPG of all time. Yes it's kind o buggy, and you can totally break the game by soloing, but it's still a fantastically deep game, good plot and excellent characters (even if interacting with them... Through timed conversations mainly, ws clumsy as hell.
2. Dragon Age Origins While the gameplay lacks the polish and depth of BG 2, it's decent enough and makes up for it with better characterization and less frustration.
3. Mass Effect 2 While I miss some things (ammo bein items rather than powers, for instance) and the plot as a bit weaker than ME 1, and the atmosphere was abit... Sillier? Less "hard SF"? (not that Mass Effect was ever hard, but 2 was noticeably softer) the silly "commander Shepherd is God" atmosphere? It's characterization and mission design more than made up for it.
4. Mass Effect (although I really rank them at about the same, ME 2 is better in characterization and some gameplay elements as well as general polish, ME 1 has better plot and atmosphere) It provided an excellent space opera story with a fun world. It was a bit clunky but nothing really bad.
5. Jade Empire A surprisingly underrated game, while the moral ambiguity of the OP/CF system was largely ignored t was a fun beat 'em up with a nice setting, a nice twisty story and some fun quests. In many ways it was the precursor of Mass Effect. (although with KOTOR)
6. Knights Of The Old Republic The best Star Wars thing since the original trilogy, or at least since TIE Fighter. Combat was clunky, characters stereotypical and the writing couldn't even touch KOTOR 2.. But somehow that fit the Star Wars setting.
7. Dragon Age 2 The rushed nature and ass-backwards design decision meant the game was a disappointment, despite good writing and interesting characters. Year more of development would have done the game a lot of good.
8. Baldurs Gate While it started it all, the game really has not aged well. There's still something exhilirating about being level 1 and fearing wolves and gibberlings and the soundtrack remains one of the best in history. But stil, it's just old and repetitive, and slow.
9. Neverwinter Nights Clunky control scheme and a campaign tat was there mainly to demonstrate the capabilities of the toolset. It didn' work very well.

I haven't played Sonic Chronicls Dark Brotherhood.

edited 23rd May '11 4:39:40 AM by Arilou

I liked the graphics of Dragon age 2 but it's story was... erratically paced and sometimes poorly polished.

However, this isn't a review space for DA 2, but a speculation place for DA 3. On the whole, I'd like to see the combat system from DA 2 continue on (minus the random spawn locations for enemy waves) with the addition of some of the old Mage spells and some newer, more powerful fighter and rogue techniques.

I really believe that DA 3 SHOULD have more time spent on it, as that's what makes the best games... unless it gets left to die and picked up again. Granted, they're going to have to balance E As demands on that, but a man can dream.

edited 25th Aug '11 8:55:32 AM by orumon

Honestly, I can'ts ee any advantages of DA 2's combat scheme compared to DAO's.

I really hope multiplayer isn't made something even remotely mandatory. WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE MULTIPLAYER NOWADAYS??!!

I can name one: the classes are actually balanced. No longer can a mage solo the game.

The problem is that the classes are even more restrictive? Want to be an archer or dual-wielding warrior? Nope, gotta be a rogue. Same goes for dual-wielding. Want to wield swords as a mage? Nope, can't do that, gotta counter-intuitively dump stat points into strength and constitution for little gain whatsoever. One of the things I liked about DAO was how much it subverted the Squishy Wizard trope. Instead, in DA 2, every mage, bar none, is a pasty bookworm with zero muscle mass.

Also, having mages be scary game breakers is Gameplay and Story Integration. Mages in general suffer tremendous Badass Decay in DA 2.

edited 25th Aug '11 10:46:02 AM by CrimsonZephyr