General Video Game Thread

[Testament]

@Sparks You know what, that's fair. I have gone back on forth over the years on whether or not Inquisition was good. It really only becomes good when you add the ending to Trespasser, which ideally should've been the ending to the main game. I suppose I should take back that it's a bad game. It just doesn't hold up in regards to the first two. The first two being in that it had a stronger plot, stronger script, better fleshed out companions. In my numerous retrospections, I would say Inquisition is a game that underperforms, but is not inherently a bad game.

However, I will take my own opinion with a grain of salt because I'm a die hard defender of Mass Effect 1 and I'm under no illusions what a mess in terms of controls, combat, UI, and camera control that game is.

The reality is, to me at least, is that BioWare's quality started to go down the moment they were forcibly married to using Frostbite. Their last three games; Inquisition, Andromeda, and Anthem have either been subpar or average at best or a mess at worst. Internal BioWare struggles aside, I'd say developers working with that engine(or at least the ones not apart of DICE)are simply working with something that was never made, never mind designed to make the games being put on it. That, to me, is one of the biggest culprits to BioWare's falling quality. Not the only one, no, but one of the bigger ones, at least.

[Sparks]

@Testament said in General Video Game Thread:

However, I will take my own opinion with a grain of salt because I'm a die hard defender of Mass Effect 1 and I'm under no illusions what a mess in terms of controls, combat, UI, and camera control that game is.

I mean, you will get zero argument from me here. As a former game developer, I can list dozens of things that should've probably been done differently in that trilogy, especially the first game! Yet my closet is literally filled with clothing emblazoned with the N7 insignia: 4 different hoodies, 2 jackets, a t-shirt, a scarf... (I admit I may have a slight problem.)

Conversely, I think I own one piece of Dragon Age-related clothing.

I enjoy the DA games greatly, but there's little question which BioWare franchise truly owns my heart.

@Testament said in General Video Game Thread:

The reality is, to me at least, is that BioWare's quality started to go down the moment they were forcibly married to using Frostbite.

I strongly suspect that there are a number of parts of Inquisition that would have been better if the team hadn't been fighting with their own tools throughout the development process. I am absolutely certain that Andromeda's problems were greatly exacerbated by forcing the engine onto a team who were both unfamiliar with Frostbite (and sectioned off in a different office, unable to learn from the painful experiences of the DAI team) and who didn't receive the same sort of support from the Frostbite dev team at DICE.

And there is absolutely no freaking reason that anyone should've played origami with that engine to try and squeeze it into a shape suitable to build anything remotely like what Anthem is now, much less what they originally planned for it to be.

I mean, aside from the fact that by all accounts writing code to match Frostbite's design is a literal circle of hell? And the fact that Frostbite's renderer apparently does not deal efficiently with third person POV, for several reasons?

Frostbite's design also supposedly pretty much demands heavy occlusion, especially if you use complex lighting. In DA:I they could use chunks of landscape to cut the view short—hills, cliffs, etc.—and it worked fairly well. But Andromeda had these big maps where you'd drive the Nomad around atop hills and see all the terrain around you; that isn't Frostbite's friend. Meanwhile, Anthem evidently takes one of the most complex lighting systems possible with the engine, and then lets you freaking fly. There are places on the map, especially right by Tarsis Falls, where you can see for miles; I have very little doubt situations like that contributed to why day one Anthem could consume all your memory and then crash in some situations.

I will give Frostbite credit: it is great for enterprising players when it comes to doing custom screenshot artwork; it's one of the easier engines to hook into and alter the camera position/angle, change the current lighting and/or fog state, manually adust the FoV settings, turn the landscape and shadow details up stupid high, etc. Many of my favorite screenshots I've posted on my screenshot blog over the years are from DA:I, where I'd freeze the game and then lovingly tweak things until the atmosphere felt just right. You can do just absolutely amazing screenshot work in Frostbite.

But despite how much I enjoy the way Frostbite can be manipulated for artistic ends, I do rather believe the engine should be put out of its misery for non-FPS games. (Or maybe put out of the developers' misery?)

So, yeah, I am certain BioWare could have done better on all three of those games if they had not been struggling against their own tools and had instead been allowed to use what they were already familiar with (i.e., Unreal).

But while I am sure DA:I would've been more like what we were used to from BioWare in many ways, I think that Andromeda and Anthem would still have been fairly troubled games even had they been built on an engine that was not the software incarnation of a medieval torture device. Yes, they probably would've both been more solid games technically, but I think they'd still have been rushed and flawed. Because, by all accounts, neither game had a consistent vision—or even a coherent design plan—until fairly late in their respective development cycles.

So I'm not sure the engine itself really is one of the worst problems; I suspect if the only thing changed was the technology used, we still would've probably seen a decline—albeit maybe starting a couple of years after Inquisition—and I suspect that's on BioWare's current management and leadership team.

Which, sadly, we can't really blame Frostbite for.

[Ghost]

Bioware is definitely in trouble. Inquisition wasn't critically panned, Andromeda failed, and so far Anthem has failed. I can't remember if it's a rumor or if it's official, but Disney is allegedly taking the Star Wars license away from EA and putting it into LucasArts again.

Bioware's 3 major hits (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Kotor) are now failing to please their target audience, and I can't remember if they have the rights to produce any D&D content. (Their 4th major hit was the Baldur's Gate games).

I think what you're looking at right now is the next AAA developer going away like Ion Storm did, or like how Midway/Atari went away and sold the license for Mortal Kombat to Warner Bros. After SWToR stops being able to make new content, I imagine you might hear about Bioware dissolving into the greater EA whole.

2k games got REALLY lucky they didn't go under after the Borderlands Pre-Sequel and Battleborn getting bootstomped by Overwatch. So I suspect 2k will come back to the forefront and CD Projekt Red will become one of if not the hottest game developers come 2020.

[Testament]

from a dark corner whispers

....bring back Jade Empire.

[Ghost]

@Testament I liked that game. Shame.

[Sparks]

@Ghost said in General Video Game Thread:

going away like Ion Storm did

Oh, geez, that takes me back; that whole mess went down while I was still in the games industry. When the infamous "Stormy Weather" newspaper article came out, the group who had defected from Ion Storm en masse to start their own company were actually at my company's office at the time, being trained on technology of ours they were licensing.

The whole situation with Ion Storm was... uh, interesting.

[Testament]

@Sparks If there's anything I really enjoyed out of Ion Storm, it was Thief Deadly Shadows.

Ugh, I love that game so much.

[Ganymede]

@Testament said in General Video Game Thread:

By previous measures, DA2 was their last good game. Which is still better than people give it credit.

While I disagree with you on your opinion of the other games, I shall await @Thenomain's response to this little tidbit.

[Thenomain]

@Testament said in General Video Game Thread:

DA2 was [a] good game.

While @Sparks said it far more kindly than I ever would: DA2 blows goats. It was graphically ugly, stylistically cheap, written more rushed than a soap opera, bankrupt of any sense of creativity and heart with some sparks of love and desire that go to prove my point.

I know what happened with DA2 that made it such a bad, bad, bad, bad game. I do more than play a game and ooze out opinions as if they were truths. DA2 was pushed as a cookie-cutter fast-as-possible release and it shows. If it had quirky charm and passion (and by the Dread Wolf you can see they wanted to!) then I could love it like a bad sci-fi show. But DA2 was just...bad.

And I know in saying this I'm going to summon Ganymede telling me that I'm wrong, but we haven't taken the time to work out why the other feels so strongly about this. Or rather, why I feel so strongly and understanding how Gany can imagine the opposite.

DA:I had far more care about the stories they were telling than DA2 did (with the two obvious exceptions, of which we sadly did not get to re-visit Merrill's). And I myself wouldn't accept someone saying "the DLCs make the game better", but the DLCs certainly have the focus and interwoven story elements lacking in the core DA:I.

So you can take "good game" back to the Word Store and ask for a refund because I think you got swindled.

--

@Sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

(especially from the people who didn't like that DA2's storyline was built around stakes whose scope was more personal than global)

In more measured tones: Too much (and many) of those stakes were told, not shown. I think they were mostly told on the wrong story beats. I ended up caring about Merrill and Varric because you saw the fallout, and their writer was pretty damn good. I loathed Anders because I loved him and Justice in DA:A, and their shared story was weak and abrupt and don't we hate when our favorite characters don't get the love we think they deserve?

I didn't need a "save the universe" plot. Clearly as I like Firefly I don't need much of a plot at all if the characters are strong enough. And the rest of the game's construction needed something solid to draw me in. And it didn't. Bleh.

--

@Ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:

While I disagree with you on your opinion of the other games, I shall away @Thenomain's response to this little tidbit.

Goddamn you posting this while I was typing this post, woman!

[Roz]

@Thenomain DA2 HAS MORE HEART THAN DA:I COULD EVER DREAM OF I WILL HAVE IT WRITTEN ON MY GRAVESTONE

[Ganymede]

@Thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

And I know in saying this I'm going to summon Ganymede telling me that I'm wrong, but we haven't taken the time to work out why the other feels so strongly about this. Or rather, why I feel so strongly and understanding how Gany can imagine the opposite.

We haven't yelled at each other like this in so long, and I've had about 6 really good bourbon drinks.

You are concerned about the production values, but you have never addressed the scope of the story. For those of us who are concerned about the writing, the story, and the leaps ahead, this is why Dragon Age 2 is the shit. Dragon Age: Origins was a good game, but it lacked the personal feel to it. Where DA2 excels is in its story, which is far more intimate and personal than DA:O, DA:A, or DA:I.

That's why I disagree with Testament. I really liked Mass Effect: Andromeda's story. It has its flaws -- all games do -- but I enjoyed the storyline. I got wrapped into it rather easily, and that is the sine qua non of the games I play. That may not be at the top of your list, but I do think you care about that because you and I concur that Merrill is so very cute and likeable.

I will play a clumsy, poorly-executed game if it has a storyline that I can get into. It's why I like the Valkyria Chronicles. It's why I adore Final Fantasy VIII. And it is why The Last of Us is the best game in the past 20+ years.

[Thenomain]

@Roz said in General Video Game Thread:

@Thenomain DA2 HAS MORE HEART THAN DA:I COULD EVER DREAM OF I WILL HAVE IT WRITTEN ON MY GRAVESTONE

DA:I did fall to Generic Open World Syndrome, but I can still identify many moments that had flavor, were crafted or surprising. My favorite at this moment is a situation in The Fade where you're getting ambushed by spiders, over and over, each representing a fear people have. They're not showcased, they just have names of "Dying Alone", "Heights", etc.

One spider is called, "Ironically, Spiders."

DA2 has a few moments like that ("if you end up sticking your thumb up his ass, I win" / "mummy, what's a slattern?"), but I will argue it's far, far fewer.

Now someone hold my beer.

--

@Ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:

We haven't yelled at each other like this in so long, and I've had about 6 really good bourbon drinks.

You've now officially drunk me under the table. No, don't try. I concede already.

Dragon Age: Origins was a good game, but it lacked the personal feel to it.

You are in-sane. The only character I don't feel attached to from DA:O or DA:A is Zevran because he comes so late in the game for me. And I wasn't a huge fan of him, but he made an impact, I know his mannerisms and his actions are interesting. I may not like them, but I feel a real, full character there.

Where DA2 excels is in its story, which is far more intimate and personal than DA:O, DA:A, or DA:I.

But DA2 isn't a story. DA2 is a bunch of stories. And I don't think they're very well told, quite possibly because they tried too hard at branching narrative, quite possibly because they were too short, quite probably both. There was little chance of any build-up except for--wait for it--Merrill's and Varric's. Hell, with Merrill you get to see her entire story.

I should say you get to see Aveline's, too. I liked her character in the same way that I like well-smoothed river rocks or zen gardens. Let me retroactively add Aveline to my list of characters who have actual stories. I think I forget her because her story isn't quite as strong; she almost doesn't have to struggle for anything.

Hell, if part one of the game (after the prologue) started with you coming into the Head of the Guard's office and Captain Aveline is arguing with Varric, that would've been a fun in media res. But I digress.

So I consider the story to be among the things I found to have a low production value. I feel bad for DA2. It was EA's attempt at milking a cash cow. But none of the stories felt fulfilled to me. Yes it had stories, but...neh, you get it by now.

I don't think DA2 did good by its stories.

Merrill is so very cute and likeable

And it breaks my heart that we didn't get an epilogue with her in DA:I. Especially if she's involved with The Champion. That was a painful moment.

If I see her in a "Dragon Age: Dread Wolf" (or whatever it'll be called) trailer, it might just hit my shut-up-and-take-my-money list right out of the gate.

That's why I disagree with Testament. I really liked Mass Effect: Andromeda's story. It has its flaws -- all games do -- but I enjoyed the storyline.

And I concur. I enjoy Andromeda in spite of its problems because it does manage to tell a story (ST:TNG-level silly in parts) and if not mature then rationalize the characters in small arcs. It had a chance to do this because we didn't jump ahead 2-5 years just to get to the next bit. We see everything the characters go through.

---

Merrill. Not a guilty pleasure.

[Sparks]

@Thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

And I know in saying this I'm going to summon Ganymede telling me that I'm wrong, but we haven't taken the time to work out why the other feels so strongly about this. Or rather, why I feel so strongly and understanding how Gany can imagine the opposite.

So... at this point I like DA2 more than Origins, honestly. But I didn't enjoy my first playthrough of 2 very much at all.

That first time I went with what would have been called a Paragon path in a Mass Effect game and the result felt... really bland. I couldn't emotionally engage with the game that much, and without that investment in the story or characters I just found myself focusing on all the cut corners (Every cavern is the same! Enemies just drop inexplicably from the sky!) and places where you could see paint hastily slapped onto things.

Then I played it a second time, this time choosing all the snarky options (I think this was because when I commented I hadn't liked the game much, @Roz lectured me that I had "played it wrong" and insisted I try again without choosing the "boring" dialogue options)... and that time the game felt more alive. Instead of a sort of stiff storyline I wasn't able to engage with, I ended up with basically this ridiculous fantasy version of a buddy tale. You had this snarky loser who gathered all these misfits around her and sort of made a family, and they all just kind of blundered around following her lead and more or less caused trouble around the city. It was not a deep storyline by any real standard—and it certainly didn't try to paint a grand, sweeping tale—but it let the characters shine. Over the course of that playthrough I came to care about pretty much all the companions in a way I hadn't the first time. (Except Anders. You are absolutely 100% correct that he was badly handled in DA2.)

At that point it became clear the game had really been built around the characters rather than a sweeping narrative. It's more like an anthology of various tales about this weird little family Hawke's put together, and how they just sort of blunder through all the notable events of Kirkwall. There's not a lot of games out there which are really character-focused in that manner, where the story is there only to serve the characters rather than the other way around.

My perception of the game was further improved after someone pointed out that technically the entire story is being narrated by Varric, who is relating it to Cassandra. Varric is not a reliable narrator (to put it mildly) so you can approach the game as being not what actually happened so much as how Cassandra is envisioning things based on Varric's (not necessarily wholly accurate) narration.

"We were outnumbered; there were five of them who tried to attack us!"
enemies fall from sky
"Only five? Surely the companions of the Hero of Kirkwall could easily deal with such a paltry threat."
"Ah... did I say five? I meant twelve!"
additional enemies fall from sky

And the caverns are because Varric can't be arsed to actually describe individual caverns after the first one, so Cassandra just keeps envisioning them the same way each time. Things like that.

That said, I still liked Inquisition better than DA2 (sorry, Roz) because I cared about the companions plus I also had a storyline with more moments of 'payoff', and a game which was—despite Frostbite—clearly more finished in a lot of ways. I felt like I was getting my cake and my ice cream, rather than just one or the other.

Sure, my love for the Inquisition companions wasn't as absolute as with that second playthrough of DA2; I wasn't as attached to them, and there were some I could honestly have just ignored entirely if I wasn't being completionist. (I admit I was not that invested in Cole's story, for instance, despite having read the tie-in novel specifically about him.)

I will also confess that my fondness for Inquisition is almost certainly influenced by the fact that it was really the first game where I got serious about my screenshot shenanigans.

At any rate, based on my own wildly differing experiences on two different DA2 playthroughs—and the change in my own opinion of the game after the second one—I can completely understand why people have such polarized opinions of it.

[Thenomain]

@Sparks

I may have been better disposed to the game had it not waited until Inquisition to confirm that it was a tale with an unreliable narrator. Perhaps if it stuck with it instead of starting with unreliable narrator and then said, "No, just kidding, this is what really happened." Because it clearly wasn't. I felt extremely cheated.

Incidentally, I have a hard time just enjoying mediocre fantasy novels too.

In the meantime, more adorable Merrill.

[Sparks]

@Sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

I enjoy the DA games greatly, but there's little question which BioWare franchise truly owns my heart.

...as attested to by the fact that my housemate is now listening to the Mass Effect soundtrack while she writes, and hearing that distinctive music is giving me a little dopamine hit of happiness that very other video game soundtracks—as much as I might love them—can inspire in quite the same way.

[Testament]

Goddamn that's a lot to unpack. I really did just want to come home, eat my sandwich and fall asleep. And now I have to sit here and defend my point of view.

You absolute assholes. All of you.

The problem with DA:I I find is it's story. In particular, its villain. Or lack of one(again, until Trespasser). Corypheus is little more than a cipher for the plot. That's it. The villain of DA:I is so one-dimensional that I just couldn't care. There was no investment for me. To be perfectly honest, I didn't give a shit about the ending of DA:I until that final scene between Flemeth and the Actual Villain who actually has real motivations and real reasons for being a bad guy. And the best part was if you look from a certain light, his reason are somewhat justifiable, if from an extremist standpoint. And that's compelling. That's interesting.

That's what Mass Effect 1 does so well. Goddamn did I hate Saren. The first fight with him on Virmire, he gets away before the bomb detonates, I remember being so goddamn livid. He beats me to relay gate on Illus. But it all pays off, and you have the mother of all goddamn set pieces in gaming with that charge up the Council Tower on gravity boots, with Sovereign just lurking in front of you, shooting your way past Geth and Krogan. That's memorable. That leaves an impact.

The same with Dragon Age 2. Two points really. Challenging the Arishok and when Anders blows up the Chantry. They're memorable, they have impact. I think back to DA:I and there's nothing that really comes to mind. There's no one 'Oh shit' moment. At least, not until the very very very, last two minutes. To me, it wasn't worth that. Especially when I had so little build up.

And it's insulting that I had to slog through what could be between 30 to 100+ hour(depending on how much you did or didn't do)game to get to that point. Once I came down from the "OH SHIT" moment, I realized that, "Hey, fuck this game." for doing that. Never mind the handful of plot holes that DA:I just kind of leaves wide open, even questions asked in DA2 were never actually fully answered. Just kind of, which only left me with more questions.

The Descent DLC did not do DA:I any favors by opening up a whole can of 'WTFuckery' when one really unpacks the ramifications.

The whole graphics bit I can handwave. Partially because I don't care. But if @Thenomain is gonna sit here and say that DA:O had better visuals than DA2, you're off your rocker. I mean, I really hope you're not gonna suggest that DA:O had better facial animations than DA2. Because...well, it didn't. DA:O was about one step above TES Oblivion in ranks of facial expressions. DA2 had a lot more color. Everything seemed to 'pop' out more. There was a vibrancy to the look of things that I appreciated. In DA:O things looked drag and dull. DA2 kind of almost looked cartoony to a certain degree, and well, I kind of liked that.

But when we talk about story, and I've already talked at length about my issues with DA:I, let's go ahead and look at DA2. The reality is that there was two stories. There was everything before the Arishok was killed and everything after. That point is where one story ends and the other starts, with various strands connecting side stories together. You could say that it's one long line of cause and effect, suggested by the fact that Hawke is the real villain of DA:I. Without Hawke, none of DA2 or DA:I even passes. I wonder how s/he sleeps at night, being responsible for an entire war. But that's pretty tangential right now.

DA2 was something different in storytelling according to video games. Or at least, BioWare games. Because really, most BioWare games up to that point had a particular set formula. I'm not going to list that formula, but if you've played KOTOR, ME, DA, and Jade Empire you know exactly the formula I'm talking about. Hell, I could Google image search if I really wanted to.

You know what, screw it, I will

What DA2 wanted to do, or at least tried to do, what throw this whole method into the grinder. There was middling success. Instead of travelling to those three different locations/planets/cities/whatever, with that one bonus one after the third, it kept things in one location and expanded from there. I could see an attempt at making things more scaled down and intimate. In some respects, I saw a certain amount of Fable in DA2. The idea of playing across one character's life, or at least, a large chunk of their life. This was different. Did it succeed? I think so, at least partially. It almost felt like it was trying to be a tv series instead of one long movie.

I look back at the number of various stories in DA2 and I name at least seven impactful side stories. I can't remember a one with DA:I. No, I can't remember two. Cassandra's knights getting wiped out and the fact that Varric's bow is actually named after someone named Bianca. But those are more companion stories so of course you'll remember those better.

I think there was a better message being sent with DA2 that just got lost in translation when people bring up enemy spawns with no tactics, the button mashy combat, the recycled dungeon environments, the list goes on. What I love DA2 is that it tried to do something different. It may be remembered for all it's faults, but people are far too quick to ignore the fact that it had a lot of good going for it. What it had better than other DA to date was character development. We saw characters age. Some mature, some not. We saw their lives move in their own directions while staying somewhat near your character. They weren't just tired to your hip, following behind you wherever you went. They had their own stories, and often times, you were just there to help. Most times when it came to your companions, you took a backseat. And that was cool. It's not all about you, Hawke. There are other people in this world, and life goes on, despite what you're doing. Some what to start a family, some want revenge, others want a prize, some just want to survive. Characters in DA2 felt honest, and I haven't seen that in many games.

And while I bashed on DA:I handily, I don't hate it(despite having the weakest cast, Iron Bull notwithstanding). It was perfectly suitable for what it was trying to do. I did like the weapon crafting, I will say that. It just wasn't memorable. And that's where DA2 shines.

And that's the problem with saying that DA2 is a good game. Because you can't really review something that's 'memorable' or 'intimate'. These are intangible descriptors. Does saying that I think DA2 was more emotive and provacative make DA:I less so? I don't know. I'm sure it's different for someone else.

The point here isn't going to sit here and try to change opinions. Good fuck, I stopped trying to change opinions years ago. I suppose explaining why I like something more than another thing doesn't invaldiate the other thing. I like them both perfectly, just one I happen to enjoy more.

EDIT: Also, Merril is a fucking idiot. Don't get me wrong, I like her, but goddamn is she an idiot. Yeah, let's consort with demons. Nothing ever went wrong there.

[saosmash]

@Thenomain The game itself makes use of the unreliable narrator as a mechanic. There are points in the story where Cass literally interrupts Varric and makes him go back and say what actually happened when he gets too outlandish/self-protective. That's not in Inquisition, that is part of DA2.

[Coin]

@Testament said in General Video Game Thread:

Goddamn that's a lot to unpack. I really did just want to come home, eat my sandwich and fall asleep. And now I have to sit here and defend my point of view.

You absolute assholes. All of you.

The problem with DA:I I find is it's story. In particular, its villain. Or lack of one(again, until Trespasser). Corypheus is little more than a cipher for the plot. That's it. The villain of DA:I is so one-dimensional that I just couldn't care. There was no investment for me. To be perfectly honest, I didn't give a shit about the ending of DA:I until that final scene between Flemeth and the Actual Villain who actually has real motivations and real reasons for being a bad guy. And the best part was if you look from a certain light, his reason are somewhat justifiable, if from an extremist standpoint. And that's compelling. That's interesting.

That's what Mass Effect 1 does so well. Goddamn did I hate Saren. The first fight with him on Virmire, he gets away before the bomb detonates, I remember being so goddamn livid. He beats me to relay gate on Illus. But it all pays off, and you have the mother of all goddamn set pieces in gaming with that charge up the Council Tower on gravity boots, with Sovereign just lurking in front of you, shooting your way past Geth and Krogan. That's memorable. That leaves an impact.

The same with Dragon Age 2. Two points really. Challenging the Arishok and when Anders blows up the Chantry. They're memorable, they have impact. I think back to DA:I and there's nothing that really comes to mind. There's no one 'Oh shit' moment. At least, not until the very very very, last two minutes. To me, it wasn't worth that. Especially when I had so little build up.

And it's insulting that I had to slog through what could be between 30 to 100+ hour(depending on how much you did or didn't do)game to get to that point. Once I came down from the "OH SHIT" moment, I realized that, "Hey, fuck this game." for doing that. Never mind the handful of plot holes that DA:I just kind of leaves wide open, even questions asked in DA2 were never actually fully answered. Just kind of, which only left me with more questions.

The Descent DLC did not do DA:I any favors by opening up a whole can of 'WTFuckery' when one really unpacks the ramifications.

The whole graphics bit I can handwave. Partially because I don't care. But if @Thenomain is gonna sit here and say that DA:O had better visuals than DA2, you're off your rocker. I mean, I really hope you're not gonna suggest that DA:O had better facial animations than DA2. Because...well, it didn't. DA:O was about one step above TES Oblivion in ranks of facial expressions. DA2 had a lot more color. Everything seemed to 'pop' out more. There was a vibrancy to the look of things that I appreciated. In DA:O things looked drag and dull. DA2 kind of almost looked cartoony to a certain degree, and well, I kind of liked that.

But when we talk about story, and I've already talked at length about my issues with DA:I, let's go ahead and look at DA2. The reality is that there was two stories. There was everything before the Arishok was killed and everything after. That point is where one story ends and the other starts, with various strands connecting side stories together. You could say that it's one long line of cause and effect, suggested by the fact that Hawke is the real villain of DA:I. Without Hawke, none of DA2 or DA:I even passes. I wonder how s/he sleeps at night, being responsible for an entire war. But that's pretty tangential right now.

DA2 was something different in storytelling according to video games. Or at least, BioWare games. Because really, most BioWare games up to that point had a particular set formula. I'm not going to list that formula, but if you've played KOTOR, ME, DA, and Jade Empire you know exactly the formula I'm talking about. Hell, I could Google image search if I really wanted to.

You know what, screw it, I will

What DA2 wanted to do, or at least tried to do, what throw this whole method into the grinder. There was middling success. Instead of travelling to those three different locations/planets/cities/whatever, with that one bonus one after the third, it kept things in one location and expanded from there. I could see an attempt at making things more scaled down and intimate. In some respects, I saw a certain amount of Fable in DA2. The idea of playing across one character's life, or at least, a large chunk of their life. This was different. Did it succeed? I think so, at least partially. It almost felt like it was trying to be a tv series instead of one long movie.

I look back at the number of various stories in DA2 and I name at least seven impactful side stories. I can't remember a one with DA:I. No, I can't remember two. Cassandra's knights getting wiped out and the fact that Varric's bow is actually named after someone named Bianca. But those are more companion stories so of course you'll remember those better.

I think there was a better message being sent with DA2 that just got lost in translation when people bring up enemy spawns with no tactics, the button mashy combat, the recycled dungeon environments, the list goes on. What I love DA2 is that it tried to do something different. It may be remembered for all it's faults, but people are far too quick to ignore the fact that it had a lot of good going for it. What it had better than other DA to date was character development. We saw characters age. Some mature, some not. We saw their lives move in their own directions while staying somewhat near your character. They weren't just tired to your hip, following behind you wherever you went. They had their own stories, and often times, you were just there to help. Most times when it came to your companions, you took a backseat. And that was cool. It's not all about you, Hawke. There are other people in this world, and life goes on, despite what you're doing. Some what to start a family, some want revenge, others want a prize, some just want to survive. Characters in DA2 felt honest, and I haven't seen that in many games.

And while I bashed on DA:I handily, I don't hate it(despite having the weakest cast, Iron Bull notwithstanding). It was perfectly suitable for what it was trying to do. I did like the weapon crafting, I will say that. It just wasn't memorable. And that's where DA2 shines.

And that's the problem with saying that DA2 is a good game. Because you can't really review something that's 'memorable' or 'intimate'. These are intangible descriptors. Does saying that I think DA2 was more emotive and provacative make DA:I less so? I don't know. I'm sure it's different for someone else.

The point here isn't going to sit here and try to change opinions. Good fuck, I stopped trying to change opinions years ago. I suppose explaining why I like something more than another thing doesn't invaldiate the other thing. I like them both perfectly, just one I happen to enjoy more.

EDIT: Also, Merril is a fucking idiot. Don't get me wrong, I like her, but goddamn is she an idiot. Yeah, let's consort with demons. Nothing ever went wrong there.

Some one has an opinion.

[Ganymede]

@Thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

But DA2 isn't a story. DA2 is a bunch of stories.

Exactly.

It should come to no surprise that BioWare's (arguably) most-lauded game in the two trilogies mentioned was Mass Effect 2. The success there was the myriad of story lines, which were united under a somewhat ignominious plot about people getting harvested by the Collectors (relative to the Reaper threat). ME2 was calculated to lead to the denouement of ME3, and while we can quibble about the effectiveness of the storytelling in the latter I do not think there is any argument that the introduction of new characters and elaboration on old ones really made ME2 the best of the series.

DA2 follows the same mold. Having an all-new protagonist is jarring, but it is a deliberate choice after DA:O and DA:A, which tied up the Warden's story nicely. You have a bunch of characters united under a common thread: the Champion. Setting aside Varric's unreliability as a narrator, one of the undercurrents of his storytelling is that there was no single event or character that led to the destruction of Kirkwall's Chantry. Everyone has a part to play in it, something that Varric even admits. DA2's narrative, to me, is clearly trying to play on ME2's success, and I believe it succeeds in doing so.

Where DA2 differs is in the progression of the story, which is divided into three separate periods. These periods are like seasons; and playing through the game felt like going from one episode to another of the Champion's allies and frenemies. Your choices as the player have a profound effect on how each "season finale" plays out, e.g., whether Fenris turns on you. This sort of "series" storytelling is similar to The Last of Us, which is divided into seasons (literally).

Then, finally, there's the introduction of the Arishok, who is probably BioWare's best villain (in my opinion). DA2 breathed life into the Qunari and the Qun in a way that DA:O did not. I doubt that anyone did not appreciate or empathize with the Arishok and his "dilemma", or those who wanted to join him. Tallis fills in even more of those gaps, showing the side of people trying to escape the fatalist-communist regime. The Arishok has the best lines, and the best moments. He attracts people to his side through a mixture of cold ferocity and faithful dedication, promising the certainty of purpose as defined by a holy book, and he commands a legion of deadly warriors bolstered by that purpose.

And now, people may have some insight as to why I like the Sanctified so much, and whence I draw inspiration. "I am here to satisfy a demand of the Dark Father you cannot understand."

[Ghost]

I enjoyed DA2, but the repeated use of the same maps over and over felt lazy.

I get it, Kirkwall wasn't huge, but apparently everything happened on that one stretch of sewer.