Dragon Age 2 - News Roundup #7

Yes, a truly perfect pic. I hope it gets broad internet attention.

Now then... that pic DID make my day! Spot on! Thanks for sharing.

What a useless and childish reactions.
Why bashing each other so much. yeh the game is different. but not ""bad"" bad.

ikbenrichard said:

What a useless and childish reactions.
Why bashing each other so much. yeh the game is different. but not ""bad"" bad.

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I am a defender of this game but the dialogue system is truly atrocious.

On another note especially for those who don't have DA:O savegame left to import --> http://social.bioware.com/project/4242/

A fine little tool called 'Gibbed's Dragon Age Save Generator'. Does enable you to build a savegame to import from scratch.

I read in a magazine review that one can meet a Dwarf within the game, one who is "followed" by assassins - one that is the last member of a once noble Dwarven family - and that depending which choice you did in Dragon Age 1, it would be one of both major families from there.

wolfgrimdark said:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/dragon-age-ii.php

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I love his sentence :lol: :

It's like playing chess with someone that swipes the pieces off the board every turn.

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enemy-attracting dummies

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This reminds me of MDK - a game of which the sequel was developed by Bioware.

I am a defender of this game but the dialogue system is truly atrocious.

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But so was practically every other dialogue system ever developed by Bioware. You always had the obvious good and bad choices, and the fluff questions which had basically no impact on the course of the actual dialogue. It's only more transparent now.

The picture may generate instant "lulz", but its bias and reliance on uncritical nostalgia is quite obvious. I am pretty sure you can find an equally stupid dialogue screen in PS:T within Anna's romance dialogue. Even worse, there is tons of generic anime message #3 "believe in yourself to achieve your dreams" type of dialogue in PS:T.

The implication that "RPGs then" were like PS:T is also flat out wrong. PS:T is still one of the most unique games ever created. No other RPG has even come close in terms of offering a similar amount of interesting dialogue options.

Choosing a scene out of the game's endgame content, which is one of the high points of the whole game, to compare it to a gay romance dialogue is also not very objective.

This whole thing reminds me of the "outrage" over the "I am looking for my father. Middle aged guy." dialogue in FO3. The funny thing was that there is an equally stupid line in FO1 in the first dialogue with an outsider about the water chip. And in FO1 this person even has a helpful answer.

The fact of the matter is RPGs and video games in general have always been childish and stupid. I don't have a problem with that. In fact I'd rather embrace my own stupidity and childishness than live in a world of make belief elitism and vanity.

Tilean said:

But so was practically every other dialogue system ever developed by Bioware. You always had the obvious good and bad choices, and the fluff questions which had basically no impact on the course of the actual dialogue. It's only more transparent now.

The picture may generate instant "lulz", but its bias and reliance on uncritical nostalgia is quite obvious. I am pretty sure you can find an equally stupid dialogue screen in PS:T within Anna's romance dialogue. Even worse, there is tons of generic anime message #3 "believe in yourself to achieve your dreams" type of dialogue in PS:T.

The implication that "RPGs then" were like PS:T is also flat out wrong. PS:T is still one of the most unique games ever created. No other RPG has even come close in terms of offering a similar amount of interesting dialogue options.

Choosing a scene out of the game's endgame content, which is one of the high points of the whole game, to compare it to a gay romance dialogue is also not very objective.

This whole thing reminds me of the "outrage" over the "I am looking for my father. Middle aged guy." dialogue in FO3. The funny thing was that there is an equally stupid line in FO1 in the first dialogue with an outsider about the water chip. And in FO1 this person even has a helpful answer.

The fact of the matter is RPGs and video games in general have always been childish and stupid. I don't have a problem with that. In fact I'd rather embrace my own stupidity and childishness than live in a world of make belief elitism and vanity.

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You're overlooking the fact that, on the whole, the dialogue options in PS:T were very well done, with a few lines that sounded ridiculous, whereas the dialogue wheel that Bioware has developed, by design, must condense thoughts and expressions to their most basic ideas, and it makes for some very dumb-looking choices. It breaks immersion. I would have much rather kept the dialogue from DA:O, because I could have created my character's voice in my head, and I wouldn't have to put up with clunky dialogue wheel choices.

And it's not vanity or elitism to state a fact. Go play through the romance in BG2 and BG:ToB with Jaheira or Viconia, and tell me if there's any romance that BioWare has developed since then that has the same amount of depth and emotional impact. I may have bought them bargain-bin style, but I've bought all of BioWare's games, save for this most recent one, and ever since they started mucking around with 3D models and romantic cutscenes, the dialogue and relationship development has been lacking.

It's not just the wheel which is annoying, but the paraphrasing which is terrible. I can't tell you how many times I have clicked something and the actual words said was completely off the wall compared to what I expected. The tone icons are supposed to prevent this but they don't work... sometimes you use an "angry" option and it just means you're aggressive, but the next time you use it Hawke is a pro-murder son of a bitch. It's completely random and guesswork, which is not how I want my RPGs to control in dialogue.

And in addition to all that the dialogue itself is often not that great. It feels rushed like the rest of the game, and choices are so blunt and in your face you might as well just look at the icons.

Captain Buzzkill said:

I've been banging my head against this very wall for the last 5 years, and I've said as much about Avatar (re-skinned Dances With Wolves + aliens). So much time and effort is spent in pushing the technological envelope that the story and character development take a back seat.

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spectacle or substance? from what i've seen, dragonage 2 has neither

Tilean said:

Even worse, there is tons of generic anime message #3 "believe in yourself to achieve your dreams" type of dialogue in PS:T.

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If you call them "generic anime messages", then you have misunderstand quite a lot of Philosophy and of Spirituality, in fact.

I'm currently going through this : I'm currently looking or a psychological therapy, because I most certainly lack this "believe in ourself" thing.

Most people just take this for granted - but believe me, I've come acrioss several horrible life stories of people who have had for example *really* bad childhoods (not this stupid chliché stuff you see on TV or in the movies), but who have also had for example a spouse who had done things ... - like bullying the partner, for example.

These are the things no-one talks abbout (and no oh-so-mature game puts this in as a theme) : How people do bad things on one another on a psychologicl level. And leave recks behind, people like those of whom not only the will i pboken, but actually the personal self-esteem as well.

These are the peopl ho have either never learned to believe in themselves in the first place, or have been bullied so much that their belief became just broken.

I'm a moderator in forum dealing with people with High Sensitivity - and MOST o them have been taught that they are "wrong" or just "ill" just because they are much, much more sensitive s the norm is.

And these people, those who learn from childhood on that rhey are wrong", they just cannot develop a healthy self-esteem.

You just cannot imagine the virtual ( = written down) outcries of relief when they learn that they are just NOT wrong !

And we - the people in this forum - we are there to help these wrong-directed people to get back on their personal roads again.

And we just need these "generic anime messages" there to do that ! These people have been constantly talked down through their own life and now they just must learn to blieve in themselve again !

You have similar problems with people with

- burnout
- depression
- posttraumatic stress disorder

It's similar to telling a gay/lesbian one that he or she is just "wrong" because of being what they re.

Only on a different level - high sensitivity, that is.

Dez, nice! JDR13, you've got to look at indies to scratch that horror film itch (just like RPGs). Check out House of the Devil and Splinter.

all hail Dez!
btw, anyone looking to get the game at some point and waiting for the price to drop might wanna check out http://downloadnplay.com/. site is crap but 100% reliable.

37$ is about 40% cheaper than any download service out there for Europe residents.
you get a cd key within 1-2 day and can redeem the game through EADM manager.
i bought a bunch of keys there and in case they didn't have something, i'd get my money back. nothing to lose.

screeg said:

Dez, nice! JDR13, you've got to look at indies to scratch that horror film itch (just like RPGs). Check out House of the Devil and Splinter.

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Seen Splinter recently on SyFy, it was pretty good. What I'm really looking forward to is this.

toltec7 said:

i bought a bunch of keys there and in case they didn't have something, i'd get my money back. nothing to lose.

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What do you mean 'in case they didn't have something'?

If you're buying keys from a legitimate source then they should all work. The only reason to offer a guarantee would be if the key source was dodgy and there was a risk of a key being blocked or wrong or something.

Captain Buzzkill said:

You're overlooking the fact that, on the whole, the dialogue options in PS:T were very well done, with a few lines that sounded ridiculous, whereas the dialogue wheel that Bioware has developed, by design, must condense thoughts and expressions to their most basic ideas, and it makes for some very dumb-looking choices. It breaks immersion. I would have much rather kept the dialogue from DA:O, because I could have created my character's voice in my head, and I wouldn't have to put up with clunky dialogue wheel choices.

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I don't think there is anything wrong with condensing dialogue. Actually, for Bioware RPGs I think it's the way to go, because as I wrote earlier their choices have always been binary and you can usually tell before looking at the options what your actual choices are. I also think that it enhances immersion. I always find it strange to pause in a dialogue to slowly weigh each option against each other. In Mass Effect 2 I very often found myself choosing my next answer while the dialogue was still in full swing, this usually made the whole experience feel a lot more natural. And when I abstractly compare how I "play" dialogue in DA:O to ME2, it really isn't that much different. In both I usually go through all the "investigate" options and then make my choice. I feel that this is the way Bioware has always encouraged players to play their dialogues, so I really don't see anything wrong with them using the "wheel". But I also rarely imagine my hero actually voicing the dialogue option I choose, maybe our playing styles are just too different.

Captain Buzzkill said:

Go play through the romance in BG2 and BG:ToB with Jaheira or Viconia, and tell me if there's any romance that BioWare has developed since then that has the same amount of depth and emotional impact.

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I think Bastila was great. In all seriousness, though I think with DA:O Bioware has improved considerably over KOTOR, JE and ME. And while ME2's romances might not have had much of an emotional impact, the characters you can romance are at least interesting.

To be honest, I didn't romance either Jaheira or Viconia in BG mainly because I let Viconia die in BG1 and I always thought of Jaheira as a kind of mentor figure, so the prospect of romancing her always felt awkward. Though, all this talk of DA and the recent re-release on GOG has definitely made me want to play the BG series again, so I will probably check it out in the near future.

The dialogue choices in a Bioware game have always been like this

a) Do you want us to help you?
b) We'll help you - but it's gonna cost you some money
c) No way - them fighting words
d) Tell me more

Here you have nice, not so nice, and combat options and the investigation options.
The dialogue wheel is just another way of organising these options. When I played the demo, I had no trouble identifying these 3 basic dialogue options that do exist in any Bioware game - all the way back to Baldur's Gate.

kalniel said:

What do you mean 'in case they didn't have something'?

If you're buying keys from a legitimate source then they should all work. The only reason to offer a guarantee would be if the key source was dodgy and there was a risk of a key being blocked or wrong or something.

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what i meant was exactly that - if i paid and it happened they ran out of keys, they would send me full amount back.
every key i got worked fine on steam and eadm. they take keys from retail games which you can activate online. worst thing that can happen is you wait a day or 2 and get your money back. if it'll possibly save me 20-30€ i'm all for it.
I bought DA:O Digital deluxe and Awakening both for 39$ total when the games were still new.

aries100 said:

The dialogue choices in a Bioware game have always been like this

a) Do you want us to help you?
b) We'll help you - but it's gonna cost you some money
c) No way - them fighting words
d) Tell me more

Here you have nice, not so nice, and combat options and the investigation options.
The dialogue wheel is just another way of organising these options. When I played the demo, I had no trouble identifying these 3 basic dialogue options that do exist in any Bioware game - all the way back to Baldur's Gate.

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Could be worse:
NAME
JOB
BYE

Dez said:

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That's hot!