Dragon Age impressions

[Scruffy]

No. The first thing that needs modding is yourself for buying that.

But does the camera suck?

http://hamand.eggman.us/crap/candc.jpg

Look at this picture. You cannot fully see the surroundings and the little visible parts are all blurred out. So yes, it does suck.

i looked at that picture. and all the choices you are given mean "yes".
is the remaning part of the dialogue not showing up and you can actually decline or what?

 

[Phelot]

"no environmental interactivity"

Will we ever get games that have this again? Non of the current 3D games seem to have any of it. Your lucky if you get one container in one room you can open.

I used to think its a resource issue with 3d games, but at this point I think they just figure it isnt worth adding all that in.

MAn I miss Ultima VII level of interactivity. Non interactive environments seem cold and dead no matter how nice they look.

Well, Risen has a fair amount of it though a lot of it is kind of pointless. If you have a saw you can saw wood, but you never get anything out of it. As I mentioned in another thread, crafting swords is a lot of fun going from the furnace, anvil, water trough, and finally the wheel. Cooking food is entertaining enough and you can sit down on chairs and stools. You can dig holes, but only when there is treasure. It would have been kind of fun to have to follow a map that tells you to take ten paces or something and then dig rather then just looking for the tell tale sandy texture.

It's kind of goofy and LARPish, but why not let people do these things? I suppose it does give your character a little bit more... well, character so they should add it in. In BG I always thought it'd be fun to watch your party sit down at the tables when they drink. I understand that there were limitations back then, but what's the limitations now?

 

[Imbecile]

How big a party can you have? Are Party members slowly drip fed in like Mass Effect? Are they any good? How big a selection do you have, and can you solo it if you want?

 

[Murk]

^ Very curious to see how Divinity 2 will handle this. Divinity 1 was pretty interactive (oh no I found the cave the orc was using to poison the town's drinking water... oh hey i got some empty flasks. guess what? dip the empty flask in and you got yourself a bottle of poison! Feel free to use to then kill orcs for some poetic justice) and if Divinity 2 only keeps an equal or at least 2/3rds the interactivity of Divinity 1 then I think it'll be a randy old time.

Phelot is right with Risen also having some lesser interactivity. You need to have a frying pan to cook over a fire or stove, use a ladle on a cauldron and you can cook stews and soups, etc. It's not HUGE but better than just clicking a menu button and shit spawning in your inventory. Though sword forging does get a bit boring if you try to forge many, especially if another smith is working at the forge at the time (you can't just push people off stuff) - leading to a lot of 4 am weapon creation.

 

[Thrasher]

From the reasonable voices here it sounds just OK. Certainly nothing outstanding or greatly innovative. Not worth $20 in my book.

 

[Saxon1974]

"no environmental interactivity"

Will we ever get games that have this again? Non of the current 3D games seem to have any of it. Your lucky if you get one container in one room you can open.

I used to think its a resource issue with 3d games, but at this point I think they just figure it isnt worth adding all that in.

MAn I miss Ultima VII level of interactivity. Non interactive environments seem cold and dead no matter how nice they look.

Well, Risen has a fair amount of it though a lot of it is kind of pointless. If you have a saw you can saw wood, but you never get anything out of it. As I mentioned in another thread, crafting swords is a lot of fun going from the furnace, anvil, water trough, and finally the wheel. Cooking food is entertaining enough and you can sit down on chairs and stools. You can dig holes, but only when there is treasure. It would have been kind of fun to have to follow a map that tells you to take ten paces or something and then dig rather then just looking for the tell tale sandy texture.

It's kind of goofy and LARPish, but why not let people do these things? I suppose it does give your character a little bit more... well, character so they should add it in. In BG I always thought it'd be fun to watch your party sit down at the tables when they drink. I understand that there were limitations back then, but what's the limitations now?

Have yet to play Risen, going to just need more time.

Im also curious how Divine Divinity 2 handles this as I thought the interactivity of DD1 was great.

I dont even really care if you cant do anything with the items. Obviously it would be better if you could, but just being able to pick them up and move them around makes the world feel more realistic to me.

 

[Phelot]

@ Saxon, Mikayel

Divinity 2 was a bit of a disappointment for me. It did feel like the first in a lot of ways, but gone are the lootable cups and dishes and other such items. You can mine, but it essentially boils down to clicking on a deposit and taking all items. Alchemy is handled by an alchemist you later on find. You bring him ingredients that you find so you're not actually brewing yourself.

All in all there isn't much to do other then advance the story and kill things.

 

[Mangoose]

No. The first thing that needs modding is yourself for buying that.

But does the camera suck?

http://hamand.eggman.us/crap/candc.jpg

Look at this picture. You cannot fully see the surroundings and the little visible parts are all blurred out. So yes, it does suck.

i looked at that picture. and all the choices you are given mean "yes".
is the remaning part of the dialogue not showing up and you can actually decline or what?

Spoiler

In that situation your only other literal choice is to remain in those caves and die, because no one's going to let you out. You've basically been sentenced to death.

 

[Foamhead]

I'm not angry. I'm merely pointing out that your impressions contain less details than a mainstream review and excel only in letting everyone know that you think the game is embarrassing shit and want to be the next skyway.

He probably waited in front of the store until the shop keep opened for the day.

 

[Starwars]

How big a party can you have? Are Party members slowly drip fed in like Mass Effect? Are they any good? How big a selection do you have, and can you solo it if you want?

Your party consist of your character and 3 other companions. And yes, party members how up as the game goes on. I think I'm still missing one.
They are useful I suppose.

So far I have a Warrior (who might have a specialization as a Templar, I'm pretty sure he does), the dog who has a special class called War Dog, a Mage with the Shapeshifter specialization, a Rogue with the Bard specialization, another Warrior who I'm not sure if he has a specialization and another Rogue with an Assassin specialization.

Some of these characters can teach your character the specializations it seems, I guess if you get their influence up high enough.

You can solo, yup.

The game is growing on me, it's good fun.

 

[citizenx]

pros:
a dog that can open doors and drink potions

I'm going to stop now, but whatever else I came up with I'd probably go into 'cons'.

cracked me up...

The bit about dog opening doors, running through hordes of enemies to a safe place where the team then respawns sounds totally whacked. I might be able to suspend some belief if the dog ran backwards thru a cleared area with no enemies, ya know lassie style dragging his companions to safety and healing...but...can he really drink potions on his own? I can understand a PC giving him 1...

Anywho, thanks for the feedback. Too bad more companies don't release demos, but likely that doesn't help increase their sales when the game blows and marketing reigns.

 

[draexem]

There was a comic in Penny Arcade a few years ago, making fun of young kids who hung out on message boards and heaped shit on games they never played and barely knew anything about. I was pretty happy that I could say I didn't frequent any forum with such a retarded community. Fast forward to today and I'm pretty shocked to see the Codex filled with such morons.

 

[circ]

Yeah, because BioWare aren't at all predictable. Watch one Mike Bay movie and you'll have seen them all. Full stop. Almost seen them all. Just that there are more explosions in the next one. Replace explosions with boobies for BioWare.

 

[draexem]

And I never would have imagined the Codex falling so low that they are not only swarmed by kiddies ranting about games they've never played, but they have morons logging in and trying to JUSTIFY the behaviour. That's seriously the saddest fucking thing I've seen for a long time.

 

[Hamster]

You did not expect to see people ranting about games they haven't played on codex? :shock:

 

[draexem]

I never expected this forum to have so many, no. Unfortunately, like VD said, a lot of the quality posters have gone and from 2006 there was a lot of people that came in that wanted to do nothing more than to bag the latest mainstream rpgs because they thought that was the cool thing to do.

 

[GarfunkeL]

cry cry cry

Wut? Do I really need to play the game to find out what I pretty much know already?

It has realtime combat with level-scaling and auto-regeneration.
It copied Dogmeat, except this one can open doors and drink potions.
It's plot and dialog is pure Bioware-trite.
It is linear to an great extent.
Wanna bet there's no alternative ways to solve any of the mainquests?
Character, combat and magic systems are boring, lite-versions of existing systems.

When folks who had already played it pretty much confirmed those things, some mystical people arrived at the scene to defend bioware and da, using the old & tired "you haven't played it you can't judge" along with the newer "you are just bunch of kiddies/basement dwellers/losers anyway".

EDIT: yes yes, it's possible that the game turns around halfway in but since that hasn't happened in any previous Bioware title...

 

[Murk]

@ Saxon, Mikayel

Divinity 2 was a bit of a disappointment for me. It did feel like the first in a lot of ways, but gone are the lootable cups and dishes and other such items. You can mine, but it essentially boils down to clicking on a deposit and taking all items. Alchemy is handled by an alchemist you later on find. You bring him ingredients that you find so you're not actually brewing yourself.

All in all there isn't much to do other then advance the story and kill things.

shit. shit shit shit shit shit. shit. shit.

 

[draexem]

It's plot and dialog is pure Bioware-trite.

Without playing the game you wouldn't have experienced a great deal of the dialogue (there is reportedly over 800 000 words) so you wouldn't be able to make this statement. Well, you could say the dialogue is pure Bioware because they made the game, but calling it trite without playing the game would mean it's based off nothing more than a couple of random pieces you've glimpsed here or there.

It is linear to an great extent.

Depends on your definition of linear.

Wanna bet there's no alternative ways to solve any of the mainquests?

Wanna bet people started bagging the game before they knew.

Character, combat and magic systems are boring, lite-versions of existing systems.

Now you're just combining lots of pretty sounding words together in a derogatory statement that holds no real information because you haven't played the game and therefore have no real information to share.

When folks who had already played it pretty much confirmed those things, some mystical people arrived at the scene to defend bioware and da, using the old & tired "you haven't played it you can't judge" along with the newer "you are just bunch of kiddies/basement dwellers/losers anyway".

When people who had actually played the game said that it was quite decent, some mystical kiddies from the anti-bioware day care centre immediately arrived on the scene to spread their superficial hate of the game. I would say what they said but what they said didn't amount to much because they actually hadn't played the game and therefore what they said din't bear repeating.

EDIT: yes yes, it's possible that the game turns around halfway in but since that hasn't happened in any previous Bioware title...

Indeed, it may be possible sometime in the future that the Sun will cease to exist, but since that hasn't happened to date I see no reason for that event to ever occur.

 

[racofer]

Without playing the game you wouldn't have experienced a great deal of the dialogue (there is reportedly over 800 000 words)

I has OVER 9000 WORDS! Must be a great game, amirite? Oh wait, but KotOR broke the dialog record once, then JE, then ME. And a lot of dialog is what makes it good, right?

Depends on your definition of linear.

So linear now has more than one definition? As in, linear could be, not linear? Lawl.

Wanna bet there's no alternative ways to solve any of the mainquests?

Wanna bet people started bagging the game before they knew.

Browse a few pages back and look at the four options dialog with all of them leading to the very same outcome. Yea, we're the ones being negative.

Character, combat and magic systems are boring, lite-versions of existing systems.

Now you're just combining lots of pretty sounding words together in a derogatory statement that holds no real information because you haven't played the game and therefore have no real information to share.

Now you're just combining lots of pretty sounding words together in a derogatory statement that holds nothing else but blatant butthurtness.

blah blah blah blah blah.......blah^n

Holy shit dude, are you that dumb?

 

[Saxon1974]

@ Saxon, Mikayel

Divinity 2 was a bit of a disappointment for me. It did feel like the first in a lot of ways, but gone are the lootable cups and dishes and other such items. You can mine, but it essentially boils down to clicking on a deposit and taking all items. Alchemy is handled by an alchemist you later on find. You bring him ingredients that you find so you're not actually brewing yourself.

All in all there isn't much to do other then advance the story and kill things.

shit. shit shit shit shit shit. shit. shit.

My thoughts as well Mikayel

The level of interaction, gameplay I think in many cases even art has greatly declined since everything went 3d. Seems like a 3D world with the impressive graphics of today should create a more attractive atmosphere thent he older 2D games....but thats rarely the case.

Based on hearing this Im not sure I will even buy D2 when it comes out. All these 3D action RPG's feel very much like the same game.

 

[Grunker]

It is linear to an great extent.

Linearity in a game gives it a fucking storyline. Love of non-linearity is subjective - you can't use it to measure whether a game is good or not (Oblivion being case in point).

In fact, with the exception of Fallout, most non-linear games are fucking shit. Worse than crap.

 

[draexem]

Remember kiddies, sarcasm in the hands of a pre-pubescent just comes off as laughable.

I has OVER 9000 WORDS! Must be a great game, amirite? Oh wait, but KotOR broke the dialog record once, then JE, then ME. And a lot of dialog is what makes it good, right?

I believe I said it was impossible to judge the merit of over 800 000 words of dialogue when only experiencing a few.

So linear now has more than one definition? As in, linear could be, not linear? Lawl.

When applied to games it seems to have many different definitions... depending on the gamer.

]
Browse a few pages back and look at the four options dialog with all of them leading to the very same outcome. Yea, we're the ones being negative.

Because no options in a single piece of dialogue (which may very well have been in the prologue/tutorial for all you know) automatically translates into no different ways of completing any of the main quests. I agree with you that there probably isn't, what I'm saying is that people were already bagging it before they knew based on dodgy evidence like you just provided.

Now you're just combining lots of pretty sounding words together in a derogatory statement that holds nothing else but blatant butthurtness.

That statement is just one epic fail.

Holy shit dude, are you that dumb?

I'm beginning to think you are.

I'm also beginning to think that the wrong people on the forums have been dumbfucked. Who's the idiot that decides that shit anyway?

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Trust me a lot of people need one but you only get it if you manage to piss off one of the admins or they feel like handing one out for the lulz

 

[unmastered]

I think is quite good RPG still we have to play more.