Really, I don't mind the generic locations. I mean, let's face it, most of the locations in the first game weren't terribly unique either. All the caves/forest paths/deep road tunnels were unique, but they all blended together pretty quickly.
complexmath wrote:I think the criticism mostly boiled down to reuse of assets (they use the same cave map constantly), plus the "spawn in waves from the edge of the screen" aspect of combat. In terms of story, I think DA2 is one of BioWare's best efforts to date, despite some glaring mistakes.
Cassandra is obviously someone who wants to get to the meat of the story and cares very little for Varric's constant attempts to describe the cave in detail... so he cuts it short and it always just happens in "a cave". Obviously. :lol:
If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all.
I mind generic locations. A lot. One of the things I love most about Inquisition is the incredible variety of settings, even within an individual region. Yes, there are 3 different desert regions, but they each have their own unique features and flavor.
Dragon Age 2 is a claustrophobic melange of sameness.
The only thing that redeems it is the incredible writing and character performances. Playing it is like reading a wonderful book in Braille printed on flypaper that smells like urine.
I mind generic locations. A lot. One of the things I love most about Inquisition is the incredible variety of settings, even within an individual region. Yes, there are 3 different desert regions, but they each have their own unique features and flavor.
Dragon Age 2 is a claustrophobic melange of sameness.
The only thing that redeems it is the incredible writing and character performances. Playing it is like reading a wonderful book in Braille printed on flypaper that smells like urine.
See, I'm mostly into RPGs for the writing and character performances, and the rest of it can totally be window dressing.
Playing it is like reading a wonderful book in Braille printed on flypaper that smells like urine.
There are three things you can count on in life: Death, taxes, and that whenever someone says they're enjoying DA2, another person will pop in with a supposedly artful hyperbole about terrible the game is.
Know how to make the graphics seem awesome? Spend about 80 hours playing through DA:O immediately before playing DA2. Suddenly the graphics, especially the animations, will seem absolutely mind-blowing.
I guess I can understand not liking that things went a little more stylized-looking for the second one, but seriously, the graphics are VASTLY improved over the first one.
Well, it doesn't help that I have to play the game with DX9 graphics due to bugs that were never resolved in DX11 graphics and problems with the way the game interacts with Nvidia drivers. If I don't use DX9 graphics, textures start disappearing and becoming corrupted after a few minutes of gameplay.
So it looks pretty much the same as DAO when I play it. I didn't really notice that much difference in the animations, but I'm going to start a new full series playthrough soon. It will be interesting to see how the technology progresses and how that affects my experience of the series.
The thing is... I like the game, despite the flypaper and urine! I'm mad at Bioware for making me endure urine-smelling flypaper while enjoying their awesome story and characters!
Overall, the graphics - textures, geometry, shading, environmental clutter - are awful. The environments, with the exception of a few very nice interiors in Kirkwall, are awful. The gameplay is okay (depending on what class you play). The character and creature graphics are okay. The voice acting is very good. The music and sound design are very good. The dialogue, story, and quest design are outstanding.
I really can't comment on the art design, because that's a very personal thing, but I kind of feel the same way about it as I do the rest of the game - it's a very love/hate thing. I love the style of the graphics, but I hate the color palette.
I get frustrated by it because it's such a frustrating mix of awesome and awful.
Ah, maybe that does it? I'm running it in DX11 with the high res texture pack, and I haven't seen any issues. I've got an AMD card though.
Playing it immediately after DA:O is a pretty stark contrast going from wooden animations and a non-voiced main character to frankly pretty damn good facial animations and a voiced main character.
I bought a GTX 970 pretty much so that I could play Assassin's Creed Unity in all its glory. Looking back on that decision, I should have saved that money to pay for my dog's veterinary bills, but unfortunately I am not prescient.
In a month or so, I will almost be able to afford to buy an R9 290, and it is very tempting, because all the Frostbite games are much better on AMD hardware. Of course if I do buy one, some other awful thing will happen that I should have saved money for.
Calling the graphics awful because you had a driver issue would be equivalent to complaining about an MMO's stability because of problems your router was causing.
I played it just last year, and the worst I could say about the graphics is that it looked like it was a game from a few years ago.
Calling the graphics awful because you had a driver issue would be equivalent to complaining about an MMO's stability because of problems your router was causing.
Give me a little credit. I was able to play the game with DX11 graphics and high res textures for short stretches. The graphics are not the thing that is great about Dragon Age 2.
Also, that's not even a reasonable comparison. Bioware and Nvidia never bothered to work together to make the DX11 version of the game work properly with Nvidia cards. According to some analyses I read, it's because the game is not making some texture calls correctly or something. Regardless, when a developer releases a 3D game that doesn't work right on the video cards owned by over half of gamers, they should work with the video card company to fix the problem. It could be fixed in the game, or, like far too many issues, it could probably be worked around in the video drivers.
Not everybody cares, though. A sizeable percentage of Bioware game players aren't in it for the graphics, and DA2 definitely delivers on the things they *are* looking for.
I'm greedy. I want the whole package. Graphics, sound, gameplay, story, all of it.
BTW, Dragon Age 2 was released in 2011. Here are some other games that were released in 2011:
Skyrim
Batman: Arkham City
Uncharted 3
Modern Warfare 3
Dead Island
Dragon Age 2 graphics can't hold a candle to any of those. It's still a more emotionally involving game with a better story than most of them.
Stengah wrote:Calling the graphics awful because you had a driver issue would be equivalent to complaining about an MMO's stability because of problems your router was causing.
Give me a little credit. I was able to play the game with DX11 graphics and high res textures for short stretches. The graphics are not the thing that is great about Dragon Age 2.
They weren't the Best ThingTM about it, but they weren't bad by any means either.
Skyrim
Uh, DA2 has faces that you don't want to set on fire immediately to stop the zombie invasion. Ergo, it looks better than Skyrim.
I actually thought the graphics were pretty OK. The cut and paste scenery however was not.
(And I didn't like the story either, so...)
DA2 plays a middle ground between realism and stylization. It's not Borderlands over-the-top, but it looks more like an illustration than it does an attempt at strict photorealism. I believe this focus is favorable to its technology and will allow it to age better than other games of this era.
I'm almost at the end of Act 2, I think, and I'm still finding this one a lot more engaging than DA: O. Not quite sure why, but I am. Maybe it's because there's more involvement with the characters.
I do wish they gave you more info about what's happened in each quest. I'm kind of constantly forgetting the background on the longer quests, and the journal doesn't archive "previously on" or anything. Yes, I want the game to compensate for me being forgetful.
I'm almost at the end of Act 2, I think, and I'm still finding this one a lot more engaging than DA: O. Not quite sure why, but I am. Maybe it's because there's more involvement with the characters.
I do wish they gave you more info about what's happened in each quest. I'm kind of constantly forgetting the background on the longer quests, and the journal doesn't archive "previously on" or anything. Yes, I want the game to compensate for me being forgetful. :)
Yeah, the journal in this one is a massive step down from DA: O (and even the one in ME). Having just recently started playing this, I now see where the terrible journal system in ME3 came from. Must be hard to find people who want to write out quest recap text.
Then again, I figure it's kinda realistic. Guy pops up and you're like "wait what, who are you?" "I'm the man you crossed THREE YEARS ago!" "Oh. I barely remember you."
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