|
Pick posted:I agree, but I still think DA2 is a ton of super good ideas that ultimately came together in a game that is still fun and interesting and unique. If it had a bit more time, it might have spoiled it. I enjoy it very much for what it is, though I'm sorry that it couldn't be polished enough for people to get the same experience from it that I did. I agree with everything you said!
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 08:53 |
|
|
Dexo posted:I must be the only person that never felt anything towards Destiny's shooting. People kept talking about how good it felt and it just felt like a standard console first person shooter to me. Lmao maybe destiny isn't right for you, since you're bad
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:10
|
|
|
A Buff Gay Dude posted:Lmao maybe destiny isn't right for you, since you're bad nah
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:11
|
|
|
I think if Bioware is doing some reshuffling they should try to hire or at least rent out the guys at CDPR who developed the hair works system so Bioware can finally move away from their Lego style snap on hair and facial hair.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:30
|
|
|
posting on the sex page
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:31
|
|
|
Arcsquad12 posted:I think if Bioware is doing some reshuffling they should try to hire or at least rent out the guys at CDPR who developed the hair works system so Bioware can finally move away from their Lego style snap on hair and facial hair. Bioware hair is an atrocity.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:34
|
|
|
DA2 did have a good party dynamic compared to other Bioware games. The most interesting part was that unlike mass effect 3, DA2 had full blown cutscenes for certain party banter moments, like Aveline sharing a drink with emo anime protagonist or Varric teaching the dog to play cards. For all it does wrong and for how awful the dialogue can get, DA2 did put focus on the characters.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:35
|
|
|
DA2 made it clear your friends had lives outside of you, and outside of their relationship to you. There were also a lot of outcomes for your party members, although most people didn't play in a way that they would see them. (For example, Aveline won't marry Donnick without your assistance, or if you don't help Fenris in Act 2 quickly enough you'll get ambushed and he'll confront you about not helping him, and if you tell him to get bent he'll leave forever.) And hell, almost no one found the fairly robust quest where you meet your cousin, Gamlin's daughter.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:39
|
|
|
Pick posted:DA2 made it clear your friends had lives outside of you, and outside of their relationship to you. There were also a lot of outcomes for your party members, although most people didn't play in a way that they would see them. (For example, Aveline won't marry Donnick without your assistance, or if you don't help Fenris in Act 2 quickly enough you'll get ambushed and he'll confront you about not helping him, and if you tell him to get bent he'll leave forever.) And hell, almost no one found the fairly robust quest where you meet your cousin, Gamlin's daughter. I forgot about Gamlen, the creepy uncle we all deserve 
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:41
|
|
|
Lord Cyrahzax posted:I forgot about Gamlen, the creepy uncle we all deserve The best line in the game is if you gay romance Fenris and then talk to Gamlen.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:46
|
|
|
I am all in on the whole God Emperor of Mass Effect idea. You play like the hundredth clone or so of Garrus, SHEPARD'S own private Duncan Idaho. Also I agree. Dragon Age 2 was a lot of fun. What was said about it's length however kind of works against it, because the game play is pretty fun for what it is, but there is just too much of it and all on the same maps over and over again. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 22:52 on May 11, 2017 |
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:49
|
|
|
ashpanash posted:I really can't recommend Horizon Zero Dawn enough. Yeah. Nier Automata is the opposite of Andromeda in a lot of ways, and not just in being good. It's actually got themes and poo poo, almost like proper literature. Despite being a sequel, it radically changes the setting, you play as a non-human, horrible things happen and not on your schedule, the protagonist is allowed to do some ethically shaky poo poo, the sidequests almost all tie into the main narrative thrust... Good times.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:50
|
|
|
exquisite tea posted:A rushed development cycle definitely contributed to the flaws in DA2 and ME3 but Andromeda had five years to get off the ground, so you can't put this one all on EA. It seems like Bioware bungled the project through and through. I think the big question is going to be, "How many people were working on ME4 and then got yanked away to make Bioware's Destiny?" Handing their most popular series to an unproven team of interns doesn't make sense, and they almost certainly didn't spend five years in development. Is that because EA is driving them to make a terrible MMO-lite that will never meet expectations, or is it because Bioware management didn't want to touch Mass Effect anymore but felt obligated to milk it some more? ashpanash posted:If biologics vs. synthetics is such a universal problem, why aren't there any synthetic intelligences in Andromeda? (The remnant are effectively VIs, not AIs) There's that AI on Voeld.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 22:59
|
|
|
Midnight Voyager posted:gonna sit around on my rear end and let the gangs infest the city again... ugggh fine, I guess I'll clean it out. It's like getting a cold and then not going to the doctor until you are actually dying of complications from pneumonia. Over and over and over again. to me that's def one of the details where the re-using of assets and busywork quests across acts didn't help da2 tell it's story at all because rounding up small time gangs is on the scale of issues that hawke could feasibly fix to some effect and if you don't those problems could grow over time and begin slightly changing the city, the game only briefly acknowledges that hawke has finally done something good for the city in act 3 when you clear out the last group, it's another story that would've best been told through details instead of none at all that bioware at least had the intentions for quote:That was the biggest flaw of that time skip thing, it made Hawke just worthless. After the time skip, they act like they haven't done literally a single thing to solve anything. Other people, sure, but they just sat around and ate pies or some drat thing. Why would I want the world to seem like it moves on when the protagonist does not? Their character arc was starting off running and just continuing to run until all their problems compounded a hundredfold and caught up with them. And they were rewarded for it, except for their stupidity getting more family killed. What lesson was learned? Well, none, they run from town in the end either way. I'm not asking to be a prophecy-chosen world-saver, I'm asking to be someone who can get things done in some capacity. Someone maybe who I couldn't replace with LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE and have a better result. this is sort of where we begin to disagree, like there's nothing a not-hawke pc could do to fix some of these issues because the story really tried to give the player unwinnable problems too big for them with even bigger underlying causes - like you can still save kirkwall from the qunari which is An Important Thing for a Player to Do but the game takes pains to show you why that conflict was inevitable in the first place because the philosophy of qun was always going to be at odds with the existing powers of kirkwall you're narratively stuck watching a slow-motion car crash, you're not going to pre-emptively attack the arishok for no reason when he's still talking about peace, you're not going to stop Petrice from sneaking around before you know she's doing it or stop the viscount's son from developing qunari sympathies before you know he has them DA:O could have been similarly cruel to player when it had the opportunity to do so - for example, instead of the plot patiently waiting for the player to find a paragon to cleanly fix dwarven society a civil war could have broken out between Bhelen and Harrowmount while you were fooling around in the deep roads for months (but instead you always arrive just in the nick of time), if you did redcliffe before the mage tower connor could've died anyway in the time it took you to sort their poo poo out but instead the plot's real nice to player and patiently waits for them yet again so that the ~*perfect solution*~ was always available; i found da2 to be unique specifically because hawke does relatively important stuff in so far as he's able to but the plot isn't going to weirdly contort itself to let him be the bigtime savior who ~*perfectly*~ fixes everything like in other RPGs, like you can't influence the big things but smaller stuff like your friendships are within your grasp, as a whole i liked this take but i get that some people want more escapism from their fiction hard counter fucked around with this message at 23:07 on May 11, 2017 |
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 23:02
|
|
|
hard counter posted:DA:O could have been similarly cruel to player when it had the opportunity to do so - for example, instead of the plot patiently waiting for the player to find a paragon to cleanly fix dwarven society a civil war could have broken out between Bhelen and Harrowmount while you were fooling around in the deep roads for months (but instead you always arrive just in the nick of time), if you did redcliffe before the mage tower connor could've died anyway in the time it took you to sort their poo poo out but instead the plot's real nice to player and patiently waits for them yet again so that the ~*perfect solution*~ was always available; i found da2 to be unique specifically because hawke does relatively important stuff in so far as he's able to but the plot isn't going to weirdly contort itself to let him be the bigtime savior who ~*perfectly*~ fixes everything like in other RPGs, like you can't influence the big things but smaller stuff like your friendships are within your grasp, as a whole i liked this take but i get that some people want more escapism from their fiction Completely agreed, and that's really what I loved about it. A lot of the game is about intentions, and tells a really interesting story about that, especially if you play Nice Hawke. Although Sarcastic Hawke is also really interesting in that the other characters by and large take issue with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjvwbwgUFE4 I feel like DA2 is the game where they best nailed the idea of you becoming a certain kind of hero, so it's less about what you did and more about how you went about it and why.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 23:09
|
|
|
Also realize DA2 had a lot of very interesting ideas that never made it to fruition because loving lol ~7-8 months development. Like the original baddie was going to be Cory. The game was going to end with your death because you couldn't stop a being that powerful, and Kirkwall was going to be destroyed. The whole reveal was going to be that Kirkwall wasn't a city, it was a Tevinter Blood Prison designed to hold Cory in, and the massive amount of ~bad poo poo~ that went down to form the prison was what led to Kirkwall being a nightmare. That's why so many of the Mages fell to Blood Magic, why so many cannibals/cultists found refuge there. Why strong/stable people that would normally be fine slowly ended up corrupted and mad by the end of the game, because the prison seals were breaking/the stress of the city in general. That's also why everything warped around/got fixed so quickly. The city was supposed to be repairing itself/"alive" and slightly evil. Then they realized they didn't have 2-3 years to make an epic RPG and instead said "Oh god oh god this has to go gold in 3 months. Uh......RED LYRIUM????", mashed out a Mage/Templar plotline since it was the fastest thing they could think of, and had it end with evil Meredith and the statues.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 23:12
|
|
|
I think this applies.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 23:13
|
|
|
FronzelNeekburm posted:There's that AI on Voeld.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 23:46
|
|
|
FronzelNeekburm posted:There's that AI on Voeld. Oh yeah. I guess that did happen. What a memorable game this was. 
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2017 23:58
|
|
exquisite tea posted:*crew arrives on Thessia* *frantically searches for the I DON'T CARE dialogue option by the third paragraph -- only finds options to PLEASE, GO ON*
|
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 00:03
|
|
|
if they just made the whole game kadara it would have been so much better
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 00:13
|
|
|
There's also just way too much poo poo going on that doesn't help and just adds an enormous degree of tedium. *scans a plant, scans a technology, collects points, learns how to make a gun, learns how to make upgrades for a gun, collects resources, scans clusters for special events including resources, scans planets for resources, fixes planets for AVP for more resources, fixes planets for AVP for more tech points, checks those regularly, crafts a gun, crafts upgrades for the gun* woo, a gun!
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 00:22
|
|
|
hard counter posted:this is sort of where we begin to disagree, like there's nothing a not-hawke pc could do to fix some of these issues because the story really tried to give the player unwinnable problems too big for them with even bigger underlying causes - like you can still save kirkwall from the qunari which is An Important Thing for a Player to Do but the game takes pains to show you why that conflict was inevitable in the first place because the philosophy of qun was always going to be at odds with the existing powers of kirkwall That is not one of the things I took issue with necessarily. I took issue with moments where Hawke just seemed oblivious in ways that could have done something. Like, again, the serial killer/mother thing. You don't just come home after hearing about a serial killer and your mom is like "OH I HAVE BEEN SENT FLOWERS JUST LIKE THOSE SERIAL KILLER VICTIMS" and be like "I THINK NOTHING OF THIS." How about "Hey, mom, be careful, a serial killer is sending flowers to his targets." You're rich, give her a guard. Insist she take the dog along on dates! Something! There is a serial killer out and you're in murdertown! The way it played out, it felt completely preventable. If things went wrong despite being steps taken, that would have been fine. But that entire sidequest was a victim of foreshadowing with a sledgehammer all the way through. Or like Anders, oh my god. I made the stupid mistake of romancing Anders, and it made it even more obvious he was about to do something bad. Did you ever play Kingdoms of Amalur? There's this scene where a guy knows the future and that he's going to die and he has this over-the-top grandiose speech windup until it happens, but you break fate and stop it and it's funny. I felt like I was watching that scene over and over, but I couldn't do the important fate-breaking part. Again, Hawke's like "NOTHING STRANGE GOING ON HERE. You want things that can be used to make bombs? Sure!" (Not that anything changes if you don't help him, but still) How about having a conversation? Did you happen to take known thief Isabela anywhere near the Qunari compound? And she suspiciously avoids the place for no reason you can ask about every time? I'm not saying you could circumvent the problem entirely there, but it'd be nice if the character I was playing noticed something was weird -at all-. It really looks bad on top of everything else they fail to notice. How about "You do that every time we come here, what's going on?" "I'm actually afraid of the Qunari." "Oh, okay!" Something. Of course, the same "please have a conversation" thing happens with Fenris where you break up for five years and apparently never talk about it at all for those five years. And then come right back to it like "so we haven't talked about it in five years, no time like the present." One of these moments would be fine, but all of this together and on top of the "nothing you do matters" thing? And on top of the weird time skip disconnects? I know they were going for the problems being too big, but the combination turned it into "Hawke is a hapless, negligent idiot inexplicably seen as a hero." And then Cass going "YES, THIS IS THE HERO WE NEED!" really destroyed the feeling that they were intentionally going for someone out of their depths. Shoulda just had her go "well, poo poo. Any other ideas? Maybe Aveline's free?" Rookersh posted:Also realize DA2 had a lot of very interesting ideas that never made it to fruition because loving lol ~7-8 months development. This was definitely true. It's just that the result destroyed the game for me in ways that cannot be dismissed as it "not being polished enough" for me.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 00:27
|
|
|
Midnight Voyager posted:That is not one of the things I took issue with necessarily. I took issue with moments where Hawke just seemed oblivious in ways that could have done something. See the funny thing is in some of these cases you can do something about it, it just happens to be not enough. You can actually go up to a templar and tell him about your vague suspicions about anders and pretty much warn him that he's up to something at the chantry. The templar agrees to launch an investigation to round up proof to back these vague accusations because you, as hawke, don't have much information to give him unless you as the player know the plot in advance. All you have is scraps of info that you can't really convict someone with. You can do this more vaguely even while Anders in the party but he reads between the lines of your convo with the templar and says he'll skip town next chance he gets. Either way the templars don't uncover his plot in time. Likewise you can't act on the serial killer until you, as Hawke, have all evidence but you can take the fastest route to him by having his apprentice do blood magic to track your mom. That's still not fast enough I get where you're coming from but I still think it's pretty bizarre that in da2 you go from rags to filthy rich, save a city twice, destroy a whole bunch of ancient horrors including defeating corypheus, the next game's big antagonist, in relatively minor side quests and still some players didn't get their escapism high because Hawke is just a little more nontraditional than most protagonists and so he fails sometimes. He doesn't heroically quest from one mission to the next, he just kind of wanders from one catastrophe to the next doing as much good as he can with only the knowledge that he, as Hawke, currently has available. As a result he ends up doing some harm too - he doesn't know the red lyrium in the deep roads will eventually ruin everything. I'm okay with this as a different take on the genre, especially since Varric opens the story by telling a traditional 'hero who vanquishes all' tale but Cassandra stops him because she doesn't want that, she wants to the know the truth. The truth was Hawke really wasn't a legit dude like Pablo Escobar like Cassandra was expecting, Hawke was more like Walter White from season 1-2 who bumbled his way into greatness. It would make sense if Cassandra wanted Aveline instead after hearing the story but Hawke does have experience in destroying spooky threatsPick posted:Completely agreed, and that's really what I loved about it. A lot of the game is about intentions, and tells a really interesting story about that, especially if you play Nice Hawke. Although Sarcastic Hawke is also really interesting in that the other characters by and large take issue with it. lol, there really is a weird synergy between sarcastic hawke enjoying the crash course he's on and the comedy of errors that makes up his story, it's like he's his own mst3k to bring things back to me:a, i found it a bit unusual that the game was selling ryder as a far less experienced protagonist who really shows their green and immaturity because (s)he doesn't have the seasoned war hero background that someone like commander shepard had... but that still doesn't stop ryder from succeeding in just about every way imaginable, like the nexus was actively falling apart before ryder arrived, there's rebellions and exiles, people have died and are dying, they can't establish the single outpost anywhere because the kett are just too strong for them and they're on the brink of losing all hope when this kid with zero real combat or leadership experience who straight up inherited their job arrives and then comes up with a fix for literally everything, like even shepard had to settle for being unable to conclusively prove the reapers to the council despite stopping sovereign
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 01:23
|
|
|
HELLO, I LIKE THE NEW MASS EFFECT, IT IS COOL AND GOOD
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 01:26
|
|
|
free hubcaps posted:HELLO, I LIKE THE NEW MASS EFFECT, IT IS COOL AND GOOD Welcome, pathfinder. We are setting up outposts itt. Thread viability has risen a few percentage points.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 01:51
|
|
|
free hubcaps posted:HELLO, I LIKE THE NEW MASS EFFECT, IT IS COOL AND GOOD HOOOONK
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 01:56
|
|
|
hard counter posted:I get where you're coming from but I still think it's pretty bizarre that in da2 you go from rags to filthy rich, save a city twice, destroy a whole bunch of ancient horrors including defeating corypheus, the next game's big antagonist, in relatively minor side quests and still some players didn't get their escapism high because Hawke is just a little more nontraditional than most protagonists and so he fails sometimes. I keep telling myself I'm not gonna continue the conversation, but come on, man, my problem isn't that Hawke fails any more than it is the game's polish. A protagonist failing is fine. Hawke's successes just feel like they were handed to them, like they didn't earn them at all, or that they're so marred with failure that they don't quality anymore. As you said, they saved the city twice and destroyed ancient horrors and they get rich... but it has no impact or weight because none of it matters. No matter what, they fail to help their sibling, so keeping them out of jail or keeping out of jail by getting rich has no weight. They end up dead or stuck somewhere else. That alone would be fine, but it keeps going. They defeat the Arishok, but any work they did to prevent the fight from happening was useless in the first place. Either we surrender people or we kill him, shrug, which one even matters? Neither, neither matters. They save the city again in the end, but only after it's been nearly leveled, and one of their own friends is the one who messed up in the first place. And no matter which side they choose, that side is an rear end in a top hat as well as the opposite side, doesn't matter. They defeat Corypheus, cool, oh wait, they actually kinda just let him out and only defeated him temporarily in a puzzle fight. That's why I feel like the game's trying to have its cake and eat it too. Neither ends up working for me. It's almost enough to give me a drinking problem. 
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 02:05
|
|
|
alright that's fair, i've seen your opinion, you've seen mine re: hawke we can now ~*move on*~
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 02:18
|
|
|
Pick posted:I love Hawke. It's the poo poo smear on the nose that really gets me hot.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 02:20
|
|
|
ashpanash posted:What is the scourge? While the game isn't brilliant at answering all your questions it DOES answer these ones. The Scourge is the weapon shot at the Jaardan by whatever other faction there was of them. It blew up their technology, specifically sought it out to destroy it. That's why the fortress/city is embedded in it - it's the thing that was shot. I don't know if you want something more specific but it's not too bad. The Kett are indoctrinated to want to absorb the biological distinctiveness of other races. Like the borg. I guess that does basically mean they're all evil. The game is a bit all over the place with this. We see that Angara get turned into Kett. The Moshae is going to be made into a Primus or something as well I guess. Yet there's kind of a Kett school with loads of information about them when you're on the Archon's ship - suggesting they don't instantly change and love the Kett philosophy. So while the question is sort of answered the game isn't sure of the answer itself. Who knows why the Angarans haven't been able to do anything at all. I guess you could theorise that they relied heavily on the tech the Jaardan had...left for them? Given them and shared with them when they were both around together? Unless Angarans are the Jaardan modifying themselves. I think you attacking the Kett base and releasing the Moshae with just 3 of you when the entire Angaran nation couldn't do it is totally loving stupid though. Whenever anyone is posting that they liked the story I don't see how they can get around things like that in their head. And to bang on about this again but the Kett and specifically that Archon have been in the Heleus cluster for 72 years. What the hell has he been doing all that time? Why do the Angara even still exist? I guess because he wants to study the Remnant but christ, what? I believe that the green blobs are more abstract and the memory fragments are you being reminded of something similar your dad did. Rather than him being meant to have left them. I don't know. I can see why the final reveal of the stuff wouldn't have been the same if you hadn't had a lot more experience under your belt, it does make sense story wise and character wise. quote:if they just made the whole game kadara it would have been so much better Kadara sort of works better than any of the other planets but story wise it makes no loving sense. I guess it's there because they had to have a den of iniquity. If that's all you can write, tell another story! quote:They end up dead or stuck somewhere else. That alone would be fine, but it keeps going. They defeat the Arishok, but any work they did to prevent the fight from happening was useless in the first place. Either we surrender people or we kill him, shrug, which one even matters? Neither, neither matters Granted that's often the case in other games but it doesn't feel as in your face as it did in DA2. And again - why hasn't the game got a minimap. Why? Who makes an open world game where you have to call up the map every minute to check you're going the right way? It's so sloppy. Taear fucked around with this message at 02:30 on May 12, 2017 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 02:22
|
|
|
Taear posted:And again - why hasn't the game got a minimap. Why? Who makes an open world game where you have to call up the map every minute to check you're going the right way? It's so sloppy. A minimap toggle or something would be nice.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 02:32
|
|
|
Midnight Voyager posted:It's almost enough to give me a drinking problem. 
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 02:36
|
|
|
Midnight Voyager posted:A minimap toggle or something would be nice. DA:I hasn't got one either so perhaps you can't do it in the Frostbite engine. Another reason that it just doesn't seem to work for RPGs.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 02:41
|
|
|
Taear posted:DA:I hasn't got one either so perhaps you can't do it in the Frostbite engine. Another reason that it just doesn't seem to work for RPGs. Battlefield 3, 4 and 1 all have player minimaps, resizeable in-game...so its definitely something Frostbite can do.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 04:47
|
|
|
Question: If Mass Effect Andromeda was made by Gearbox would it have been better or worse than what we got?
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 09:03
|
|
|
DancingShade posted:Question: Depends on which developer they'd farm it out to
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 09:05
|
|
|
DancingShade posted:Question: Worse. Not a doubt in my mind.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 09:06
|
|
|
It's odd but even though DAI doesn't have a minimap either, this never bothered me even remotely as much as in MEA. In fact I couldn't even remember it not having one until someone pointed it out. Maybe it's the different movement speed ( horses) and smaller maps, I don't know.Also, you "DA2 was good" people have serious brain damage, go see a doctor.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 10:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 08:53 |
|
|
Remember to cross-reference all DA2 was good statements with E/N post histories.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2017 10:26
|
|
