Dragon Age questions

[Dagger Dias]

A lot of people seemed to be disappointed with Dragon Age 2. I personally thought it was a great game in its own right, even though I do prefer Origins to the second game for a couple of reasons. Both games have things that they are better at than the other. Origins offered more choices for what type of character you played as, and had a larger variety of places to explore. Dragon Age 2 had a better dialogue system, similar to Mass Effect's. The hero could talk, and the differentiations between races was far better done. That being said the majority prefer the first game.


Here are some discussion questions.


1. Which game do you prefer, Dragon Age Origins or Dragon Age 2? Why?

2. If you could change something about Dragon Age 2 to make it better, what would it be, and why? (If you like 2 better than come up with a revision for Origins instead)

3. What would you like Dragon Age III to be like?


I liked Origins better. It had more options for my character given the option to play races other than humans. This is what I would change about Dragon Age 2. Being able to play it as an Elf or Dwarf could have been rather interesting. I think they rushed to complete it, although it is still a solid game. I hope they combine the dialogue style and quest system seen in Dragon Age 2 with everything that made Origins so great, which let's face it was more or less everything about it other than the silent hero, for the third game. When that comes out it will probably be the most excited I have been about a gaming release in years.

What about the rest of you? Discuss.

 

[RicoLen]

Dragon Age 2 is pretty amazing, the only real problem with it is that it's not a continuation of the Dragon Age: Origins story. When I saw what they did with Mass Effect 1 and 2, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that Dragon Age 2 would do the same thing. So I went out and beat the game in several different ways with different characters that I thought would be fun to play in the second game.

I created Hadouken Aeducan, an asshole male dwarf noble rogue, that set his brother up as king, and kept the anvil to create golems again. He butchered Arl Eamon's boy, slaughtered the elves and befriended the werewolves, cleansed the tower and recruited the templars, he befriended Loghain Mac Tir but then sent him to sacrifice himself to kill the arch-demon, left Sten imprisoned, didn't save the dog, killed Leliana at the shrine of Andraste by having her in the group and desecrating the ashes in front of her, I had Alistair put to death, I refused to listen to Zevran's plea for mercy and killed him, killed Wynne in the tower when I told her I was there to purge the tower and I left Shale to stay with the birds. I romanced Morrigan, drove her to pure love (very hard to do), and then shut her down and refused to impregnate her, driving her off in tears. At the end of the game it was just me and Oghren (and Loghain), and that's NOT an easy fight.

He was my favorite one simply because he was the most evil vile nasty creature in the game. That grey warden might as well have been a dark spawn himself.

Then I made both Chani & Kirk Cousland and set them up as the rulers of Fereldon. I played them pretty straight and clean both, and romanced the appropriate characters so that I could become king/queen.

I also made an equally vile mage goth chick Kahlan Amell, who did nearly everything Hadouken did.

I made a city elf girl Lussana... I don't even remember what I did with her, except I know I did right with the Dalish.

All of that work I did because I wanted to play WITH these characters in Dragon Age 2. I wanted to see what would happen and how the stories would differ if I started with one character or the other... but what happens? I'm stuck with Hawke. OMFG I was pissed. I damned near didn't even buy the game I was so mad. I hardly even wanted to play the game I was so upset that I basically wasted all my time working on those different outcomes. It wasn't a complete waste, but it wasn't the great payoff I was hoping for either.

Then I played the game... and really the game was great. In all technical aspects the game was vastly superior. The game ran better, it looked better, the system was streamlined nicely, the voice acting was great and of course Hawke now had a voice which was great too.

However... I didn't care for the story all that much, not that it was bad, I LOVED the WAY it was told, but I wasn't blown away with it like I was with Origins. There was less depth in the companions than in DA:O and it annoyed me that I never new EXACTLY what Hawke was going to say based off my dialogue choices. There were several times I made a dialogue choice thinking I understood the gist of what was going to be said only to find out it went in a completely different direction than what I would want to say.

All in all I would say that DA2 was an amazing game if I had never played DA:O. However, DA3 should be simply amazing because it should be to DA2 what ME2 was to ME1, and that will be a very good thing.