Raven on 13/3/2011 at 08:26
Quote Posted by gunsmoke
I honestly find Thief Gen and T4 Anticipation depressing. It feels like a guy who had that ONE girlfriend when he was 18 that left him. He never got over her and has remained single to this day because no other woman is exactly the same as her, so by definition she is imperfect and not worthy of his time.
Maybe it is just me, but I do seem to be getting screwed over be any anticipated sequels; Thief 3 (and 4), Civ 5, Dragon Age 2, Deus Ex 2 (and 3), Worms Reloaded.
There is only so much disappoint one enthusiast can take.
Yous are correct, I haven't followed the forums; all I have seen is advertisement and previews in magazines (PC Gamer, PC Format, Edge, CVG site). I am not sure if this is my laziness or if I have just had better things to do. It may have something to do with the chronic under investment in public access internet that we have in the UK (specifically hotels, trains, and in any city or town that isn't London).
I guess it has just been a hard lesson to learn. I bought Civ 5 and Dragon Age 2 based on advertisement, the brilliance of the originals and the good reviews they received. I guess I just have to learn that I can no longer trust
a) advertisement: Okay I never use to do this anyway, but adverts use to list "features" for each game. These were unique mechanics that made the game interesting... I would love to see a list of "features" for Dragon Age 2.
b) the good name of a game: I swear there was a time when a sequel use to improve upon a previous game. From my own collection I would offer HL1 to HL2, Myth:TFL to Myth:Soul Blighter, Civ1 to 4, Dungeon Keeper to DK2, Worms 1 - World Party, heck even Quake 1-4. There was a trend. This is no longer the case. It has taken me a while to come to grips with it.
c) game reviews. I have always been more cautious of PC Gamer (UK) than PC Format (UK). These are the only two that I have actually trusted. Recently I have started reading the CVG site too. Based upon the reviews for Civ 5 and DA2 given in PC Gamer from now on they can go stick their head in pig. I can't seem to find PC Format on the shelves these day, perhaps they have gone bank corrupted due to not accepting bungs from EA.
When I referred to a mini golden age I was speaking about the last 5 or 6 years. There have been some great games out there; Oblivion, Total war series, some surprisingly decent shoots (Far Cry 2), LOTRO, Dragon Age Origins made things look really interesting... this was a game that echoed the brilliance of the previous golden age of gaming (Baldur's Gate 1 and 2). I have been on two gaming laptops for the last 5 years and have always considered upgrading to a top spec rig. All I am saying is that I am slowly realizing that there now really is no need, and no reason to on the horizon. I use to argue that PC Gaming was still alive and well, and in many ways it still is, but when console development takes precedent over PC development (as in Dragon Age 2) then there really is no point in investing in the hardware of a top spec machine.
Eldron on 13/3/2011 at 12:13
To be fair though, even with the good sequels you'll have enthusiasts whining about changes having ruined the series.
Dragon age 2 is not a bad game for being streamlined, but it suffers from being made in a much shorter amount of time and is a more condensed experience overall, much like mass effect 2.
Sulphur on 13/3/2011 at 14:17
Quote Posted by Ostriig
I call it the "But Wait! There's
more!" approach, and it had me groaning in the first game too. Except now there's, no pun intended,
more of it. In Origins they did it for bosses or some other important encounters, it was like clockwork - for each third or quarter of a boss's lifebar you got a new wave of dingbats. But now it feels like more than half of the mobs you encounter had their mates step out for a shit in the bushes just before you walked in. I don't know who made the final call on this, but the dude shouldn't even be allowed to work on facebook games.
.
.
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I could go on and start listing plenty of other changes that really suck, but the thing is that I expected quite a lot of downgrades and I was willing to put up with all just for the sake of getting more of the stuff that I liked about the first game. And so far it's not there, next to no agency in plot development, practically no interaction with your party... I'll keep going, I'm hoping the plot picks up a bit and maybe I can at least get some value out of that. But I am disappointed to find that all that whinging on the official forums seems to be appropriate, I was hoping parts of it would turn out to be overreactions.
I can only nod my head in complete agreement to everything you've said. DA2 is a stripped down and mercilessly gutted version of DA:O. Of all the things gone, I really, really miss being able to talk with my party. Sure there's plenty of banter, which DA:O needed more of, but not being able to stop on the side of a road and have a little chat? Fecking ridiculous.
The plot does seem to be a non-starter, and with the combat being just waves of enemy mobs surging at you, the entire focus on making 'something amazing happen' every time you enter combat robs the sense of satisfaction and achievement you get from slowly levelling up your spells/abilities during the course of the game. Now with my mage it's Fireball -> Firestorm in a level or two and suddenly *boom* every battle is an explosive conflagration.
It looks epic, but the problem with making every battle look epic, Bioware doesn't seem to have realised, is that it makes every battle boring right quick.
At least there's still the poorly animated sex. My party seems to be in a bit of a hurry to get to it, though:
Inline Image:
http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/7492/dragonage22011031318102.pngI'm not sure I particularly like the position Hawke seems to have chosen for himself in this particular manwich. :erg:
Jason Moyer on 13/3/2011 at 14:39
Quote Posted by Raven
Maybe it is just me, but I do seem to be getting screwed over be any anticipated sequels; Thief 3 (and 4), Civ 5, Dragon Age 2, Deus Ex 2 (and 3), Worms Reloaded.
There is only so much disappoint one enthusiast can take.
You've played Deus Ex 3? What didn't you like about it?
Thief 3 was a damn fine game. No, it didn't reach the glorious heights of Thief Gold but that's not a realistic standard for any game. The atmosphere and writing were as good as anything, and while it stumbled with some of the mechanics it wasn't a complete departure like DXIW was (granted, I've always played DX/DXIW like Thief so the missing RPG elements don't bother me too much). I still spent the entire time sitting in a shadow observing guard patrols and figuring out what I needed to do next.
If I were the sort of person who was constantly disappointed by sequels, I think I'd stop buying sequels. Maybe that's too difficult of a lesson to learn, I dunno.
Avalon on 13/3/2011 at 15:11
Quote Posted by Ostriig
I loved Origins for its writing, for the multitude of plot and sublot options, for the sense of genuine agency it gave the player in the unfolding events. And I haven't seen any of that, it all boils down to meaningless conversation choices (Lovely & Resonable / Unfunny Hollywood Wit / Moderately Rude) that may or may not slightly influence your companions' attitudes, and at best minor, surface level choices with near-instant outcomes. I remember one of the designers talking in an interview about how the whole crux of the plot is about building up to this one major choice that Hawke has to make, and I'm starting to think that it may be the
only choice Hawke has to make.
After finishing the game and conferring with someone who finished it playing differently than I had, I've come to the conclusion that there are simply no choices in Dragon Age 2. They do a fairly okay job of giving you an illusion of choice - but in the end, all that really changes are a couple lines of dialogue. Even the biggest choice in the game, at the end, still has pretty much identical results. Very disappointed. All of the decision making was what I enjoyed the most in Dragon Age, and how differently one game could play from another.
gunsmoke on 13/3/2011 at 18:40
Jason, I think you are the first and only person to agree with me about DX: IW and T: DS. What some folks don't seem to take into consideration was the fact that it was incredible that they even released them at all. Especially all of the problems with the engine. They both were well reviewed, and considering it was a new company taking on new hardware I was pleased.
Oh, and the audio/voice acting in both games was stellar. And fuck if the lighting and shadows in T: DS wasn't the most impressive graphical achievement I had ever seen up until then, and actually affected gameplay.
Phatose on 13/3/2011 at 18:56
Hm. Odd. There are certainly some decisions that matter - who you take to the dark roads, for instance. And you don't talk to your companions at the side of the road anymore - got to visit them at their homes, instead.
And they aren't copy and paste dungeons. Copy and paste require little effort, but it's still more then they put in. It's the EXACT same dungeon every time, with different sections walled off. Typically in the same damn place every time.
Combat.....well, we've been over that.
But plotwise, it just wasn't well thought out. Year 4 is especially jarring. I'm a mage, I walk around with a staff in robes, throw the occasional fireball after dark in town. And actually, occasionally throw lightning in plain view of everyone in the middle of the day. I'm shacked up with an elven blood mage, and from a family known to have more mages then was politically convenient. All this is a city where the templars are basically anti-mage nazis (The game has a quest about the 'tranquil solution'). Within a year of arriving in the city, I was hired by a mercenary band precisely because I was a mage.
And despite all this, in 4 years not one templar has stopped by to say "So, about that lightning...". What the fuck.
Sulphur on 13/3/2011 at 19:11
Yeah, that struck me too. People you meet even note that you're a mage and a possible apostate, but you can just futz around and not ever be accosted by a templar unless the particular side-quest you're on has something to do with them. And even after you soundly beat on a gang of templars (which you'll have to if you want that Elven bloodmage as a companion), there are no repercussions to be had. The sheer oversight of it combined with everything else makes me wonder what the hell Bioware was thinking with an 18-month dev cycle.
Avalon on 13/3/2011 at 19:28
Quote Posted by Phatose
Hm. Odd. There are certainly some decisions that matter - who you take to the dark roads, for instance.
I consider that one an illusion of choice. Regardless of who you take, the same person is still removed at the end of the act - it's just simple semantics where they go. You never speak with them again until nearly the end of the game anyway, and where they appear doesn't change based on that decision (unless you get the special third outcome where they die, I suppose). In any event, they are always permanently removed from the party.
There are some minor decisions where you can choose to side with either the templars or the mages in the various "track down renegade mage group" quests, but even those ultimately lead to pretty much the same thing. In one specific case, you can choose to lie to the templars or tell them where the mages are - but even if you lie, the templars find them anyway.
The one I was most disappointed with was that you can't save a certain person from dying in Act 2 (leaving spoilers out, but anyone who has played knows what the most hard hitting death of the act was). They could have left out decision making entirely for every other quest in the game and given it only to that one, and I would consider them redeemed - it was such a great opportunity that they missed to show how something so small and unrelated to you could come back and bite you in the ass, or not if you made a different choice at a crossroads that initially seemed harmless.
Sulphur on 13/3/2011 at 19:30
Avalon, spoiler tags for that first paragraph and various portents of death, buddy. :erg:
