circ
Arcane
Back in, I don't know, last year sometime, I made a quickie review of DA:O. People disagreed with me, fanboys mostly, and it's understandable as I only played through the origin stories. Well noble and magi actually. Anyhow, now I've played through the whole game and to boot, ME 2. So. I should be qualified to still call it a piece of shit, no?
My initial assessment of DA has not changed. The noble origin story is crap. VO is crap, animation is beyond crap and graphical clipping and bugs are amazingly bad. It wasn't unusual for the game to CTD every so often when I had too many buffs up, or just went through the wrong doorway with the wrong team member. Not to mention, with the highest resolution and all graphical glitz up, it still looked like something from say, 2002 or thereabouts. I could live with the low rez textures, but the sparcity of a lot of the environs was questionable. Eventually I even found weapons and armor that didn't look completely shitty either. But why does all the leather armor look largely the same? And not very leather armory either. At one point I got a Felon's coat, a unique leather armor. Lo and behold when it looked exactly like dragonskin standard leather armor. Come on BioWare.
Also I'm not sure who the director/producer was behind DA, but he or she should be fired. How can you release a game in this state? This is on a Obsidian scale of fail. Soundtrack is also horrible, and I had to turn the volume down severely. Typical Inon Zur boombastic generic orchestra stuff, throughout the game pretty much.
Of all the origin stories, I actually enjoyed one, dwarven commoner. I didn't really give a fanny about my 'sister', but Leske was cool beans and being an enforcer was fun. Too bad it ended too soon actually. Leske was also of all the NPC's, the only one with good VO imo. Well, the dialogue with mom and sis was shit and had the Gaider mark of failure on it, but I'm pretty sure someone else had their hand in Leske's dialogue.
Anyhow, after the origin you always end up at Ostagar. Your origin doesn't really matter either, except for a possible extra sidequest towards the end and flavor text in the ending clip, which by the way is lazily put together. Ostagar and especially Kocari wilds are bad, bad areas. And it's easy to see why someone would stop playing at this point when one enjoys exploration in their games. It gets a little better however, when you're asked to light a fire on top of a tower. BioWare's linear areas work when there's logic for keeping you in a corridor. At the top you meet your first boss. You may be treated to a cool slow motion animation kill, unfortunately, this can happen with any Ogre mob in the game, and it gets pretty annoying towards the end.
After this, you end up in a small hamlet, with two enterable buildings. You can sidequest in a nearby forest, however, this forest consists of one big tree and some small hills. Maybe in Canada, forest means something else, I don't know. A little more, even this early would not have hurt. Like say, the windmill being enterable and the mine. After getting your shit together, you can pretty much go anywhere in any order, but it's likely, or recommendable you go to the Tower of Magi first. Finishing all sidequests in the hamlet of Lothering also gives you the only good looking sword in the game. I was actually still using it for the archdemon fight, and had no problems.
Tower of Magi starts to show the bad direction again. The fade is far too long and dull, the tower itself works well enough. In the fade, the only thing you do is read books for some extra xp, kill generic mobs and do a semi-puzzle that will give you perma stat increases. I like the idea of different shapeshifter forms, but when the area itself is so yawn inducing, it doesn't help. Once you free the tower of the evil evil mobs, it stays largely the same, just sans evil evil mobs. Now the tower is actually a big C&C thing, by BW standards. Depending on who you side with, you get either mages or templars to help you in the final showdown. I always went with mages, but it wouldn't have mattered, because I soloed the archdemon, and all it did anyway was add additional flavor text in the end slides. That's right, slides. Even generic RTS games have more than ending slides, man.
After the tower you're likely to head to Redcliffe. The village and castle aren't too bad as area design goes, just bad textures and sparse landscapes. Although the view from the docks is nice. But hey, Oblivion can look nice in places too. Depending on how well you do in the village defense, you get some badly designed items, or not. After that you head to the castle, and get pretty much railroaded into one big boring quest to heal the Arl, whatever that's supposed to be. The queen, or Arless, whatever, really chafed me, and I would have had no problems killing her, but playing as a goodie two shoes Warden, I saved her and her equally annoying kid. This is also the point at which you can get the Bloodmage spec. Now bloodmage at first doesn't sound like much, but consider the fact that a single bloodmage can probably play through the entire game solo and you start wondering what the hell BW was thinking. In fact, you don't need to put any points into any mage skills at all, maybe some spellpower buffs and shields, if you go bloodmage.
The Haven quest is crap, but atleast you get to fight your first big dragon if you want, and if you didn't do Flemeth yet. But eh, it's hardly a tough fight, in fact, Flemeth is tougher. Some high Dragon. More like push over Dragon.
This is largely how the entire game plays out; if you want some guys support in the end, which gives you troops, you have to do a boring as hell dungeon crawl for them. But they're optional, except for healing the Arl, so whatever. All you get is troops for the end and flavor text.
Depending on how you play, your last stop before a lot of Denerim hijinx will probably be Orzammar, the fabled city of the Dwarves. Dwarves however, in this game, play largely like ghetto druglords. Had they been Duergar I would have understood, but eh, this is just weird BW. Also Deeproads. People say the Deeproads killed it for them. No. Generic dungeon crawling killed it for me, among other things. Deeproads was a lot more interesting than a lot of other previous areas. Fade, for example was a lot more dull. So I don't get this specific complaint.
Towards the end you get to do some more railroading in Denerim. Which in the end doesn't matter, because you're still going to have to fight Loghain, a generic villain with paranoia as his motivation apparently, and can even choose to recruit him. Which at this point is pointless, so bitch has to die. Mainly because his daughter is an even bigger bitch. Oh I should also mention that in Orzammar you get your last party member, unless you also grab Loghain, and this dwarf is the only good party member pretty much, as VO and dialogue goes. He also makes for a good bloodheal bitch for your bloodmage.
Eventually, after some horribly scripted battles you end up defending Denerim. At what follows are more horribly scripted battles. This is where the bad direction/production really shows in full glory. At one point also, you're supposed to kill some Darkspawn generals. Now funny thing about this is, they're tougher than the Archdemon. One general managed to drop three of my groupmates, until I finally dropped it and some Ogre. Archdemon by comparison - use spirit protection, use paralyze and paralyze runes, problem solved. I didn't think the generals were worthy of paralyze so maybe that done it!
Well anyhow, you now get the ending slide. And a lot of flavor text. The big C&C will no doubt have a massive effect (haha) in DA 2. Except it won't. Did you play through ME 1 and then imported your guy into ME 2? Notice how all the C&C turned into random news reports? Or wait, one former groupmate making a 30 second cameo, let's not forget that. So much for C&C.
All in all, the graphics are bad, textures especially. Characters look generic, it's not unusual to bump into atleast one clone of yourself in the origin story, no matter how ugly you are. Graphic design is the worst part. Oh and the animations. Oh and just plain bad graphic coding. It's not unusual to see a severe drop in FPS in some areas for no obvious reason.
VO is probably the worst I've ever heard in a BioWare game. It doesn't help when the facial animations are so bad to boot. For a supposedly mature game, your groupmates with the exception of Oghren, sure act like toddlers. And a religious toddler. And a grandmother. Although I must confess, Zevran's lines about the GILF mage were giggle inducing. But then, so are Oghren's. But this probably just proves that they did some outsourcing for some of the dialogue, because the rest of it is horrible. By comparison, ME 2 and ME 1 for that matter, have marginally better VO and animations, and no serious or obvious graphical glitches including SEVERE clipping. Maybe swap teams guys? By patch 1.03, some questbreaking bugs are still in. But atleast they fixed rogue dexterity bonus. Who cares about some dex bonus when you can just pump all your points into cunning and can thus outdamage your warrior?
And then there's the combat. Some people call it a tactical marvel, with trap laying and ambushing but eh, you could just rush into battle just as easily and save yourself the trouble of the clunky interface. It's WoW combat with lots of badly written dialogue. Though DA 2 might promise graphical improvements (highly unlikely seeing the difference between ME 1 and 2), it's still in the hands of nincompoops.
My initial assessment of DA has not changed. The noble origin story is crap. VO is crap, animation is beyond crap and graphical clipping and bugs are amazingly bad. It wasn't unusual for the game to CTD every so often when I had too many buffs up, or just went through the wrong doorway with the wrong team member. Not to mention, with the highest resolution and all graphical glitz up, it still looked like something from say, 2002 or thereabouts. I could live with the low rez textures, but the sparcity of a lot of the environs was questionable. Eventually I even found weapons and armor that didn't look completely shitty either. But why does all the leather armor look largely the same? And not very leather armory either. At one point I got a Felon's coat, a unique leather armor. Lo and behold when it looked exactly like dragonskin standard leather armor. Come on BioWare.
Also I'm not sure who the director/producer was behind DA, but he or she should be fired. How can you release a game in this state? This is on a Obsidian scale of fail. Soundtrack is also horrible, and I had to turn the volume down severely. Typical Inon Zur boombastic generic orchestra stuff, throughout the game pretty much.
Of all the origin stories, I actually enjoyed one, dwarven commoner. I didn't really give a fanny about my 'sister', but Leske was cool beans and being an enforcer was fun. Too bad it ended too soon actually. Leske was also of all the NPC's, the only one with good VO imo. Well, the dialogue with mom and sis was shit and had the Gaider mark of failure on it, but I'm pretty sure someone else had their hand in Leske's dialogue.
Anyhow, after the origin you always end up at Ostagar. Your origin doesn't really matter either, except for a possible extra sidequest towards the end and flavor text in the ending clip, which by the way is lazily put together. Ostagar and especially Kocari wilds are bad, bad areas. And it's easy to see why someone would stop playing at this point when one enjoys exploration in their games. It gets a little better however, when you're asked to light a fire on top of a tower. BioWare's linear areas work when there's logic for keeping you in a corridor. At the top you meet your first boss. You may be treated to a cool slow motion animation kill, unfortunately, this can happen with any Ogre mob in the game, and it gets pretty annoying towards the end.
After this, you end up in a small hamlet, with two enterable buildings. You can sidequest in a nearby forest, however, this forest consists of one big tree and some small hills. Maybe in Canada, forest means something else, I don't know. A little more, even this early would not have hurt. Like say, the windmill being enterable and the mine. After getting your shit together, you can pretty much go anywhere in any order, but it's likely, or recommendable you go to the Tower of Magi first. Finishing all sidequests in the hamlet of Lothering also gives you the only good looking sword in the game. I was actually still using it for the archdemon fight, and had no problems.
Tower of Magi starts to show the bad direction again. The fade is far too long and dull, the tower itself works well enough. In the fade, the only thing you do is read books for some extra xp, kill generic mobs and do a semi-puzzle that will give you perma stat increases. I like the idea of different shapeshifter forms, but when the area itself is so yawn inducing, it doesn't help. Once you free the tower of the evil evil mobs, it stays largely the same, just sans evil evil mobs. Now the tower is actually a big C&C thing, by BW standards. Depending on who you side with, you get either mages or templars to help you in the final showdown. I always went with mages, but it wouldn't have mattered, because I soloed the archdemon, and all it did anyway was add additional flavor text in the end slides. That's right, slides. Even generic RTS games have more than ending slides, man.
After the tower you're likely to head to Redcliffe. The village and castle aren't too bad as area design goes, just bad textures and sparse landscapes. Although the view from the docks is nice. But hey, Oblivion can look nice in places too. Depending on how well you do in the village defense, you get some badly designed items, or not. After that you head to the castle, and get pretty much railroaded into one big boring quest to heal the Arl, whatever that's supposed to be. The queen, or Arless, whatever, really chafed me, and I would have had no problems killing her, but playing as a goodie two shoes Warden, I saved her and her equally annoying kid. This is also the point at which you can get the Bloodmage spec. Now bloodmage at first doesn't sound like much, but consider the fact that a single bloodmage can probably play through the entire game solo and you start wondering what the hell BW was thinking. In fact, you don't need to put any points into any mage skills at all, maybe some spellpower buffs and shields, if you go bloodmage.
The Haven quest is crap, but atleast you get to fight your first big dragon if you want, and if you didn't do Flemeth yet. But eh, it's hardly a tough fight, in fact, Flemeth is tougher. Some high Dragon. More like push over Dragon.
This is largely how the entire game plays out; if you want some guys support in the end, which gives you troops, you have to do a boring as hell dungeon crawl for them. But they're optional, except for healing the Arl, so whatever. All you get is troops for the end and flavor text.
Depending on how you play, your last stop before a lot of Denerim hijinx will probably be Orzammar, the fabled city of the Dwarves. Dwarves however, in this game, play largely like ghetto druglords. Had they been Duergar I would have understood, but eh, this is just weird BW. Also Deeproads. People say the Deeproads killed it for them. No. Generic dungeon crawling killed it for me, among other things. Deeproads was a lot more interesting than a lot of other previous areas. Fade, for example was a lot more dull. So I don't get this specific complaint.
Towards the end you get to do some more railroading in Denerim. Which in the end doesn't matter, because you're still going to have to fight Loghain, a generic villain with paranoia as his motivation apparently, and can even choose to recruit him. Which at this point is pointless, so bitch has to die. Mainly because his daughter is an even bigger bitch. Oh I should also mention that in Orzammar you get your last party member, unless you also grab Loghain, and this dwarf is the only good party member pretty much, as VO and dialogue goes. He also makes for a good bloodheal bitch for your bloodmage.
Eventually, after some horribly scripted battles you end up defending Denerim. At what follows are more horribly scripted battles. This is where the bad direction/production really shows in full glory. At one point also, you're supposed to kill some Darkspawn generals. Now funny thing about this is, they're tougher than the Archdemon. One general managed to drop three of my groupmates, until I finally dropped it and some Ogre. Archdemon by comparison - use spirit protection, use paralyze and paralyze runes, problem solved. I didn't think the generals were worthy of paralyze so maybe that done it!
Well anyhow, you now get the ending slide. And a lot of flavor text. The big C&C will no doubt have a massive effect (haha) in DA 2. Except it won't. Did you play through ME 1 and then imported your guy into ME 2? Notice how all the C&C turned into random news reports? Or wait, one former groupmate making a 30 second cameo, let's not forget that. So much for C&C.
All in all, the graphics are bad, textures especially. Characters look generic, it's not unusual to bump into atleast one clone of yourself in the origin story, no matter how ugly you are. Graphic design is the worst part. Oh and the animations. Oh and just plain bad graphic coding. It's not unusual to see a severe drop in FPS in some areas for no obvious reason.
VO is probably the worst I've ever heard in a BioWare game. It doesn't help when the facial animations are so bad to boot. For a supposedly mature game, your groupmates with the exception of Oghren, sure act like toddlers. And a religious toddler. And a grandmother. Although I must confess, Zevran's lines about the GILF mage were giggle inducing. But then, so are Oghren's. But this probably just proves that they did some outsourcing for some of the dialogue, because the rest of it is horrible. By comparison, ME 2 and ME 1 for that matter, have marginally better VO and animations, and no serious or obvious graphical glitches including SEVERE clipping. Maybe swap teams guys? By patch 1.03, some questbreaking bugs are still in. But atleast they fixed rogue dexterity bonus. Who cares about some dex bonus when you can just pump all your points into cunning and can thus outdamage your warrior?
And then there's the combat. Some people call it a tactical marvel, with trap laying and ambushing but eh, you could just rush into battle just as easily and save yourself the trouble of the clunky interface. It's WoW combat with lots of badly written dialogue. Though DA 2 might promise graphical improvements (highly unlikely seeing the difference between ME 1 and 2), it's still in the hands of nincompoops.
smug
