Dragon Age Origins vs Dragon Age 2

[Roguey]

(I still don't understand why people hate them so much; I think I finished the whole dungeon in like half an hour)

I hated them because they were a breaking point. Up till then there hadn't been a single interesting combat encounter (and as Jeff Vogel will tell you, RPGs need both bosses/set piece battles and filler), and fighting through dozens of thieves in Neverwinter was bad enough and now they expect you to fight 80-100+ orcs (I checked in the toolset) with amateurish and sloppily placed triggers that result in half a dozen enemies spawning out of thin air right behind you/on top of you. Even Bioware writer Patrick Weeks called them out on this bullshit ("I don't get to play with the complex world of scripting, because my bosses don't think my feeble writer brain can handle it.... and even I know that you make sure that a given encounter triggers properly for every direction by which that encounter can be accessed. You don't expect to see it done properly in Joe Player's amateur module up on the Neverwinter Vault, but the bar's a bit higher for a professional game designer who's asking for $50US to play his module.")

The only thing the NWN2 OC is good for is the character creator. And some slightly more interesting story themes (but who cares if you have to wade through shit to get them? Just read some sucker's LP if you care about your video game stories that much). I completed DA once with few problems and gave up on NWN2 twice so DA's the better game as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Excidium]

NWN 2 has the better setting.

Generic vs Grimdarky, which is better and why? Discuss!!

 

[Overweight Manatee]

DA:O has effectively no more than 2 enemy types: Mage and non-Mage. NWN2 has much more variety.

DA:O has a metric ton more trash mobs in areas. I don't think that all of the NWN2 trash mobs added together can compare to the Derp Roads alone. Nevermind that 2/3rds of the DA:O side quests are you literally reading post-it notes off a billboard, going to an area on the map, and fighting someone. You can really feel the 10 mins of work an intern at Bioware put into the entirety of those, copy pasting a few spawn points, setting them to be level-scaled, then writing 2 sentences of a quest description. NWN2 OTOH has the entire keep sidequest which was a well-done addition.

DA:O has a horrifyingly bad skill system. NWN2 has at least a half-assed D&D ruleset which A. makes the rules transparent, and B. gives a lot more variety in how you want to plan and design your character.

For all the shit the NWN2 camera gets, you can fuck around in the options menu to pretty much fix it up. DA:O on the other hand is fucked no matter what you do. There are battles in which archers will fire on you from literally 2x as far away as you can see, and because you can't coerce the camera to look in their direction so that you can click and return fire all you can do is run half the way up to them and then start shooting back from 50 feet away. NWN2's problems never came near to that.

NWN2 has a story that, while uninspiring, at least makes sense. DA:O? lol fuck that shit. Its like Bioware isn't even trying with its "go to 4 planets and find the star maps" reiteration this time around.

Both have pretty much universally deplorably boring companions all along. DA:O gets a point for having a plethora of instances in which you can kill them off or otherwise avoid them, but then I have to remove Bioware's gold star because most of the characters in DA:O are so god damned annoying that not being able to kill at least half of them in some way would be a crime against humanity. Also, Neeshka's impersonations of other party members are always funny to hear (even if otherwise you feel the need to skip every other dialog with her in it).

Really, the only good point in DA:O's favour was the unusually impressive Origins section. In comparison NWN2's tutorial was a joke.

 

[Jaesun]

The writing, quests and NPCs are considerably better though

Better? DAO and NWN2 OC are equally shit in those aspects.

How exactly?

 

[Excidium]

I never got too far in NWN2 but the story overall was so bland and generic. Foster child farmguy that turns out to be destined to journey in a quest to save himself from linear and inevitable events with his ragtag band of adventurers.

I've read RPG session transcripts with better story than those two games.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The story may be generic, but so is every single story Bioware has ever made. The difference is that NWN2 at least has a writing staff that knows what writing means.

And I for one don't mind a generic adventure now and then... Unless it involves the Bioware staple (started at BG2, but there it was extra banal with the whole "gather money lol" thing) of going to random places without connection to the main story.

 

[Excidium]

Sure, writing doesn't get to "Sailing is like sex. Do it wrong, and it'll make you sick." levels so I guess it isn't that bad...

 

[Carrion]

The story in NWN2 gets a bit better after the godawful first 20 hours. The narrative is terrible at times and some parts feel really forced, but there are some occasional interesting moments there that make the game worth playing. DA:O's story is unbelieveably bland and simply fucking sucks from start to finish. In general, the writing is clearly superior in NWN2.

Overweight Manatee summed it up quite well overall. Simply the fact that it has D&D makes NWN2 superior from a role-playing perspective, whatever your definition of "role-playing " might be. I also agree with Sceptic that you can go through the fights in NWN2 rather quickly, which makes the trash mobs bearable. If you removed trash mobs from DA:O, you would have no game. Sure, you can finish the fights in DA:O quickly too, but the dungeons are five times longer and ten times more boring, and you'll be fighting the same enemies over and over again with the exact same tactics.

I wouldn't even compare these two games, really. They do share a lot of the same faults, but in the end NWN2 is so much better it isn't even funny. That says something about DA:O as well.

 

[Excidium]

Well for me it doesn't make any difference that they use D&D when they make such a poor use of it.

I guess I found NWN2 so bad because I actually expected something good of that game, while DAO I just played with the "lulz" mindset.

 

[Mrowak]

There's no competition here. I mean, sure, both have mind-numbing combat but at least

NWN2 OC sired MotB.

DA:O spawned endless waves of fan fiction and brought into new levels. Let's not forget about godawful DLCs and an expansion.

The fact reamins that I haven't replayed any of them, nor do I ever intend to.

 

[Stygian Lurker]

Both games are , however while DA:O is a mediocre game, it is still far better than DA2 which is total rubbish.

 

[Serious_Business]

Where is Volourn

 

[Captain Shrek]

Both games are , however while DA:O is a mediocre game, it is still far better than DA2 which is total rubbish.

 

[racofer]

So, Phage, you have not reported back. Are you still alive or did DA2 give you an aneurysm?