I've only reached Act III so far, mostly because I enjoy the beginning sequence of the game where you run into Flemeth, so I replayed that a few times. I was depressed when I read online that once you resurrect her from the amulet you never see her again... lame. Though, it's neat to think that it's called "Dragon Age", but the plot rarely (if ever) revolves around a dragon... except Flemeth. She turns into a dragon, it's Dragon Age, which means most every game they make in the series should be connected to her somehow.
I have a tough time rating DA2. It's a fun game. Bioware is a master at telling stories and for the most part they've done a good job with this title. The problem? From start to finish you see band-aid game mechanics, items, and systems that were designed for only one reason... SPEED! they just cranked this game out to soak up our cash.
I also want to say that the lack of mod support is terrible!
Sound/Speech: Sounds are ok. Would be cool if they could add in a Wilhelm scream once or twice during an Act. I'll touch on it again, but I think only having human male and human female speech from the main character was a way to save production time/cost and to decrease the overall memory requirement.
Combat: I like the new combat, but I cheat, so I didn't have to plan anything. But it was fast-paced and I felt like I was the hero of the story.
Environment/Location: Using the same city sections for the whole game was lame, and a time saving method. Also, just just one city and outskirts is lame too. Otherwise, it looked real nice and was a great character for the overall game.
Companions: The companions were neat, but not really inspiring. I took Isabela everywhere after I got her. After that I just swapped in a few people here and there, except for the goody-goods Aveline and Sebastian. The fact that you couldn't re-equip them was another time saving mechanism and it sucks. Was also let down that Bethany goes away no matter what you do.
Weapons, Armor, Loot, Gear: Woefully uninspiring. First you can't change anyone's armor besides Hawke (without mods), and then the weapons models were lame, and the armor models were worse. You know why you had tons of random trash loot all over the place? Because they didn't have enough time to make more stuff with actual graphical models.
Enemies: Not too much in the way of an assortment of enemies. How many times do I have to fight Shades and Abominations in a 24-hour period? A few times they had slow motion finishing moves, and I loved it, it just didn't happen when I beat the Arishok and that sucked.
Replayability: No way, not much to replay here. After playing the beginning a few times I noticed that the NPC reaction to your lines might be different, but their lines that follow that are usually the same no matter what you do, unless you do something significant. For example, one option might be to fight, but when you pick a different option you end up fighting anyway.
My advice for Dragon Age III: If I were the producer for DA3 I'd walk into the meeting room and play a 5 minute compilation of scenes from the Conan movies, Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, Excalibur, etc, all set to this Conan the Barbarian track (start at 3:01) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkMhRvEmG6s
Once that was over I'd go to the white board, and in large huge letters I'd spell out E-P-I-C!!! I'd tell the designers and writers that this next game needs to have an epic feel to it.
The next game should have a complete module generator to it like the old Baldur's Gate games (or was it NWN?), either way. Make the story amazing, sprawling, and epic! Create a base game that will last years, like the Sims, where you can make your own content that you can then share with friends and even play in co-op mode. Then instead of an entire new game every year or two you create a new fully voiced module, every 6 months or so, to extend the base game/story, but include new meshes, models and locations that the module builders can use going into the future.
Otherwise we'll just keep getting mediocre games.
I have a tough time rating DA2. It's a fun game. Bioware is a master at telling stories and for the most part they've done a good job with this title. The problem? From start to finish you see band-aid game mechanics, items, and systems that were designed for only one reason... SPEED! they just cranked this game out to soak up our cash.
I also want to say that the lack of mod support is terrible!
Sound/Speech: Sounds are ok. Would be cool if they could add in a Wilhelm scream once or twice during an Act. I'll touch on it again, but I think only having human male and human female speech from the main character was a way to save production time/cost and to decrease the overall memory requirement.
Combat: I like the new combat, but I cheat, so I didn't have to plan anything. But it was fast-paced and I felt like I was the hero of the story.
Environment/Location: Using the same city sections for the whole game was lame, and a time saving method. Also, just just one city and outskirts is lame too. Otherwise, it looked real nice and was a great character for the overall game.
Companions: The companions were neat, but not really inspiring. I took Isabela everywhere after I got her. After that I just swapped in a few people here and there, except for the goody-goods Aveline and Sebastian. The fact that you couldn't re-equip them was another time saving mechanism and it sucks. Was also let down that Bethany goes away no matter what you do.
Weapons, Armor, Loot, Gear: Woefully uninspiring. First you can't change anyone's armor besides Hawke (without mods), and then the weapons models were lame, and the armor models were worse. You know why you had tons of random trash loot all over the place? Because they didn't have enough time to make more stuff with actual graphical models.
Enemies: Not too much in the way of an assortment of enemies. How many times do I have to fight Shades and Abominations in a 24-hour period? A few times they had slow motion finishing moves, and I loved it, it just didn't happen when I beat the Arishok and that sucked.
Replayability: No way, not much to replay here. After playing the beginning a few times I noticed that the NPC reaction to your lines might be different, but their lines that follow that are usually the same no matter what you do, unless you do something significant. For example, one option might be to fight, but when you pick a different option you end up fighting anyway.
My advice for Dragon Age III: If I were the producer for DA3 I'd walk into the meeting room and play a 5 minute compilation of scenes from the Conan movies, Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, Excalibur, etc, all set to this Conan the Barbarian track (start at 3:01) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkMhRvEmG6s
Once that was over I'd go to the white board, and in large huge letters I'd spell out E-P-I-C!!! I'd tell the designers and writers that this next game needs to have an epic feel to it.
The next game should have a complete module generator to it like the old Baldur's Gate games (or was it NWN?), either way. Make the story amazing, sprawling, and epic! Create a base game that will last years, like the Sims, where you can make your own content that you can then share with friends and even play in co-op mode. Then instead of an entire new game every year or two you create a new fully voiced module, every 6 months or so, to extend the base game/story, but include new meshes, models and locations that the module builders can use going into the future.
Otherwise we'll just keep getting mediocre games.