Dragon Age 2 - Legacy Reviews @ GameSpy, Eurogamer

Motoki said:

Well don't forget there are also Dragon Age Origins fans there and many of them dislike Dragon Age II so there is criticism there also.

Click to expand...

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Okay, I see. Yes, this is understandable.

I often have the feeling as if these 2 games were aimed at 2 different audiences …
Not too far away from the truth, I fear …

Click to expand...

Reader, Gavin points us towards an interesting discussion unfolding on the Bioware forums, where lead designer Mike Laidlaw, has been talking to fans about the most controversial changes made to the Dragon Age: Origins formula for Dragon Age 2, saying “I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: we stripped some stuff out of DA becuase it was busted”

“If I’m going to piss you guys off, it’s going to be because I still firmly believe that RPGs do need to be more accessible to new players,” Laidlaw adds. “Not diminished, but made less imposing and less terrifying to new players. In part because I want more people to play Dragon Age, and in part because there have been a lot of improvements in gameplay and UI design in the past 15 years, and we can learn from them.”

At the same time, Laidlaw says that Bioware are listening carefully to fan feedback to Dragon Age 2. He points toward the recently released DLC pack, Legacy as an indication that the developers have been acting on some of the most controversial aspects of the sequel, including the use of repeated areas, respawning waves of enemies and the customisation of party followers.

“Legacy, I think, goes a long way towards demonstrating that we are listening, that we are aware of the weaknesses of DAII, and that we will continue to address them,” writes Laidlaw. “Up until Legacy, though, I don’t think anyone would have believed me if I’d said we were going to take it into account. A lot of people on this forum had built up a grand conspiracy theory where we were deliberately stripping RPG out of Dragon Age because we are MEAN.”

The forum discussion was sparked by a video posted by Bioware forumite Kothoses Rothenkisal debating the positive effects that community feedback can have on a game in development. The thread quickly turned into a discussion about the possible changes Bioware would make for Dragon Age 3 based on the passionate backlash to the sequel from some Dragon Age fans. Mike Laidlaw then appeared to address a few of Dragon Age 2′s most controversial points. Here are his comments on each of them:

1. Area Re-use.

An obvious problem, and one we are keenly aware of. Not an intentional issue, and certainly not “by design” but something that happened and needs to be addressed. Players should not have to accept that Cave A is also Caves B through D. While -some- assets will be reused in the course of any game (and should be, otherwise games would simply be too expensive to create), they should be done so with considerably more discretion. In retrospect, I probably should have just cut content to reduce the re-use, but that’s a tough call to make in the moment.

2. “Wave” combats

When everyone talks about how it’s raining men in DAII, there’s clearly something wrong. Simple problem: waves were introduced as a mechanic and overused without enough time to tune them. Fan reaction prompted us to start making adjustments to the system pretty much immediately, and Legacy demonstrates the start of the result. I am amused when people note that waves are “gone” from Legacy. They’re actually there, just done much better. So, yes, the bad waves are gone. Still more work to do, but a good start.

3. Impact of choice

We knew we were taking a risk making a story about a major even in Thedas that was pretty much going to happen, and reaction has been very mixed. While some folks love the “sound of inevitability” that pervades DAII, there are a number of weak spots in the impact they feel they should have on the world. Fair point. If we’re going to offer you a decision, it should matter. Easy fix would be to cut decisions, but that’s not what DA is about, so we’re going to have to get better about clear impact of those decisions within the same game you’re currently playing. Addressable, but not within a DLC, as they are pretty self-contained items.

4. Follower customization

A mixed bag. Lots of folks liked unique looks for followers. Many more hated losing the ability to put new platemail on Aveline. Completely understandable, and likely aggrivated by finding platemail that your mage character would likely never be able to equip. Needs to change, but we’ll cement how before talking in detail. Also not really addressable in a DLC, as there would be fundamental changes to the core game needed, which goes beyond the scope of what a DLC can deliver.

“There’s more issues out there, for sure, but those are some that I’m comfortable talking about at this point,” says Laidlaw, adding “there’s a game out there that’s better than both Origins and DAII, and I’ll be damned if the talented folks of the DA team can’t find it.”

Click to expand...

Couchpotato said:

Really its just because the first was busted. Let me say it again this guy should not be making RPG's anymore.

Click to expand...

“If I’m going to piss you guys off, it’s going to be because I still firmly believe that RPGs do need to be more accessible to new players,” Laidlaw adds. “Not diminished, but made less imposing and less terrifying to new players.”

Click to expand...

aries100 said:

-ehm- no.

the game, to me, surpasses any Bioware game I've played, at least with regards to the story, the characters, the dialogue etc.

Click to expand...

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 5, 2011

I still haven’t played the game, so I don’t feel qualified to comment. But maybe you can.

Mike Laidlaw explains changes to Dragon Age 2

I dunno, but it sounds telling to me how he takes pains to demonstrate how they aren’t trying to clone the gameplay in Devil May Cry: “There’s a LOT of territory between DA2 and DMC, and if we were truly headed in that direction, we would have made much larger changes. Cut party, remove crafting, one class, etc would all be changes that show a move to action game, but none of those happened.”

And then there’s this: “A lot of people on this forum had built up a grand conspiracy theory where we were deliberately stripping RPG out of Dragon Age because we are MEAN. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: we stripped some stuff out of DA becuase it was busted. Other stuff was simply a design choice, and some of it was circumstance.”

Wait, so he’s saying that they stripped out the RPG from DA2 for a lot of reasons, but being mean wasn’t one of them?

I need to get my brain around this crap. Again, it would help if I had a better point of reference. I never even finished DA1.

He then explains the need for accessibility, but protests that it does NOT mean making the game “dumbed down” or “consolized” – and then he states that he doesn’t even know what “consolized” means. I won’t take this as a literal admission of ignorance or stupidity on his part, but rather an attempt to blur the current and historical differences between PC and console games, and the aspects of PC gaming that make it special and unique. In other words, he’s fully behind the publisher dream of the PC being nothing more than just another target platform.

Okay, I am going to my mental happy place here for a moment. I’ll be right back after I’ve calmed down…

… Okay. I’m feeling more zen now. Am I deliberately (if subconsciously) misunderstanding his words here? Am I just seeing “spin control” instead of honest dialog? I don’t know.

But here’s what I do know. Or rather, what I understand, and can assume to be truth. Again, I’m talking generalities and trends here, not talking about any specific game:

It’s been (thankfully) demonstrated that RPGs can still make metric crap-tons of money. But they still reach a smaller market than the best-selling action games, and they are more expensive to make than action games. Which means their ROI (Return On Investment) is lower – they spend more to make less. So from a bean-counter perspective, it would be highly desireable to get a higher ROI by (A) Increasing the size of the market, (B) Decreasing the cost of making these games, or preferably (C) Both.

And if I were a big publisher / bean counter, I imagine I’d wonder, “Is it possible to do both of these while still retaining enough of the genre’s uniqueness to make it stand out from the ocean of me-too action games?” When trying to please the stockholders, especially after spending enough money to fund a third-world country for a year to buy a major RPG developer, this would be a question that an executive with hopes on keeping his job would have to try and answer.

And that is exactly what I think is happening, across the board. This entire dialog is basically Laidlaw trying to rationalize approach (C). They tried to make it more appealing to a wider audience. And they cut a lot of corners to get the game out more quickly and cheaply – with apparently disastrous results in some cases. And they are trying to see if they can do this without completely whittling away whatever makes RPGs “special” in the eyes of their market.

Call me what you want, but I take an issue with trying to condense a favorite genre into nothing more than a special spice to sprinkle onto an action game to improve it’s marketability.

And here’s a problem with the “mainstream” games biz in general: When you are a studio working for a big publisher, or a studio owned by a big publisher, your customer is the publisher. The “real” customers belong to the publisher, and they are the publisher’s problem, and indirectly a studio is still making games for the actual gamers. But make no mistake: If you are a game designer wishing to keep your job, your focus will be on making your real customer – the publisher – happy.

It doesn’t matter if your game will sell a trillion copies if your customer is unhappy and cancels the project before release. Unless your name is Wil Wright and you are working on The Sims and have enough political clout to ram it down your parent company’s throat. But that’s an extremely small group of people that can pull that off, and getting rarer all the time as game budgets rise higher and higher, and game developers become more and more disposable.

One more reason to support your friendly indies with direct sales, huh?

I have no problem with playing with the formula, which pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an RPG, or even with a company trying to find ways of broadening the market and reducing costs for making them. Hey, I’m all about trying to make RPGs on the cheap. Those are all good things. But as an RPG fan, I demand that it be done with a respect and passion for the genre, not by bean-counters or wannabe Spielbergs or action-game fans who hate the very aspects of RPGs that we love.

Click to expand...