BioWare - RPS Interviews Gaider about DA2's weaknesses

Hawke was just the point-of-view character of the narrative. It's nothing new in literature, comic, movies/anime, theater and video games (DAII isn't the only one, FFXIII/Oblivion come to mind). They are always hit and miss, because some people just hate to feel powerless in a narrative (or to be the puppet of the real protagonist).

If you could have influenced the events, you would have been the Big Bad of the game too.

I must be misunderstanding you. Did you just say it's OK for a cRPG, and a BioWare cRPG at that, to not give the player a major say in how things pan out, story-wise? Sorry, but I thought that until DA2 big choices and big consequences (and with them branching stories/content) were the main attraction, sort of a BioWare niche lately (and ten years ago, a vanilla standard feature in most cRPGs, a major part of their appeal).
 
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It's amusing to read comments from people who have obviously played the game multiple times, then report on how "horrible" an experience it was. Most of the issues can be fixed, and I don't think they're dumb enough to ignore all of the feedback or not to learn from their mistakes. So yeah, I remain hopeful. There were plenty of decent game play elements from DA2 that can be retained, yet still change it enough get the next game "right".
I maintain that the problem with Dragon Age II was not story, themes, romances or that your choices made small difference in the scheme of things. It was a bland, generic and repetitive game world. It's a testament to how rushed it was, that the game was simultaneously much smaller and more repetitive compared to the previous game. In particular, the "dungeons" were horribly bland.

The time lapse idea was great in theory, but the city of Kirkwall should have changed more over the years.

This. The dungeon combat was okay, but that's about all there was in a dungeon. Plus the camera behavior, which just becomes utterly irksome over time. That's a big reason why I like isometric games; you're not having to constantly adjust the camera.
 
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Multiple times? You do know you can reload and run a dialog differently to see how it plays out, right? Or share your experiences on a forum? There's also youtube if the gameplay time between choice and seeing consequence is >5 minutes.

"Dumb enough to ignore mistakes"... There were no mistakes, besides agreeing to EA's timetable. All the changes (over NWN/DA:O) were intentional, right down to the camera (transition to the more action-awesome-ready 3rd person view). Where have they even publicly acknowledged what went wrong? The only thing they've said so far is that the voiced protagonist is staying and graphics engine will be prettier. There was never any post mortem.

As Gaider himself says, bigger budgets need wider audiences. Wider audiences don't like games that - as he put it - "ask things of the player". Non-action RPGs that "ask things of the player" are a niche of max 1m (see Jeff Vogel's sales or even Divinity Original Sin backers), so if you need to get 5m to just breakeven (as EA budgets are openly set to), that means removal of all the stuff in DA:O that newBioWare called "clunky", "vestigial", "inaccessible", "text-heavy" etc to draw in the non-RPG fans. But feel free to keep hoping!
 
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Multiple times? You do know you can reload and run a dialog differently to see how it plays out, right? Or share your experiences on a forum? There's also youtube if the gameplay time between choice and seeing consequence is >5 minutes.

I've seen many a game do what you're talking about; nothing new there.

Anyway, I wasn't talking about you in particular. Just about people in various forums.
 
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In Morrowind and in Oblivion, and I guess, in Skyrim, as well?, players feel more at home with the things they do; the (illusion of) player agence is carries out better, is it not? than in DA2's case.

For the record: I liked DA2; there were certain flaws with the game such as the wave combat, the badly concealed locations that were used again and again, enemies poppin' out of the ground and dropping from three beams without warning. The story itself, though, I found, no, not new, but a break from the usual 'it is written' formula.....

Thw whole time jump idea was also great; the idea misses a lot, though, when a man waits 7 years to see an official. The main plot, I agree, could have been carried out and designet a lot better. However, the subplots, including the familiy plot, the plot about the Dalish elves, and the plot about about the Arishok was carried out and designed very neat, imo, if not great. (at least to me).

I dislike the isometric camera now. It was OK 12-15 years ago, but I want to be able to scroll the camera around the battefield; also the isometric camera i DA:O was not very good, I found. And I do not find that making the game more accesible e.g. making the controls better is a bad idea ;) - nor do I find that starting sort of in the midle of things is a bad idea. This lets people who do not have a sense of what an rpgs is adjust to the whole rpg experience. And that was the purpose of having Varric tell the tale of the hero of kirkwall - among other things.

I do agree, however, that if you listened to the PR that Bioware put out for this game, it clearly said: (I think) shape the

If you have played DA2's teo DLCs, you'll see Bioware's response to the criticism of DA2. The last DLC for DA2, Mark of the Assasin, is very good, and gives you, at least two ways to proceed through the game. And the combat, at least in Mark of the Assasin, is a lot more tactical than in DA2.
 
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Basicly you had a man named Hawke, that walked around doing not much of anything. He had a house and some people that he knew. He really was powerless to change any outcome to anything he did, but he had a nice house.

He did have to go to some dungens that were cut and pasted by a 3 year old. Wait I change that, he had to go to one dungen it would seem that they tried to make seem like other dungens but just blocking off a passage way until the next 100 times you had to go to a dungen that looked just like that.

Then back to his house. Most of his family died not much Hawke could do as he really wasn't much of a hero.

Anyways, the first DA was very fun in a surprising way when I picked it for something to do one day. I did pre-order DA2 and not sure I was as ever disappointed in a game in every single aspect.
 
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And I do not find that making the game more accesible e.g. making the controls better is a bad idea ;) - nor do I find that starting sort of in the midle of things is a bad idea. This lets people who do not have a sense of what an rpgs is adjust to the whole rpg experience.

Shallower gameplay is more accessible but wears off faster. It often leads to disposable entertainment. It is ultimately less satisfying than deeper more complex mechanics that are not very accessible and need a bit of upfront effort to learn. Good things come to those who wait.

This is not a particularly contentious point. If you design a fighting game with duck, roll and attack as the core mechanic, it will be easier to get into than a 'true' RPG with armor classes, hit % probability, buffs, cooldowns etc etc - but it will get boring more quickly. And conversely an RPG is comparatively hard to get into but will be much more likely to stay on your hard disk for 5 years, and on playthrough #23 you'll still discover something new.

The best solution is not BioWare's "press X for Awesome and let's make it COD-accessible to the grandma and mobile device audience". It is to have an intelligent tutorial system, that doesn't feel like a chore, that the devs didn't design as an afterthought, and that lets people learn at their own pace. Instead of Frostbite- look at the shiny! they could develop some decent tutorial AI that sees where you're weak and explains all the way to basics if required. After that, if people don't get it, then they should stick to FPS or the remaining 99% of AAA genre releases.
 
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I found the writing to be average to awful - but then again, that's how I feel about most of what they put out.

I especially hated the dwarf character - as he was excessively implausible and seemed to SCREAM "look at me - I'm so cool" all the time. Ugh.

It's not stellar, and I dont care much for the companions either. The framework of staying in one location and having the world evolve for a decade could have worked though, if not for...

Even if the game had been a masterpiece in terms of storytelling - it would still have had endless recycled content and god damned enemies dropping into combat from the sky!

That last part of the game is just about the dumbest and most inexcusable design decision you could possibly make for the game.

It actually had a pretty cool character development system - but they had to go and ruin everything by making the tactical considerations during combat meaningless.

Exactly. And to add to that, I've certainly enjoyed plenty of games where the writing was shit, but the combat and the locations were interesting.

Bioware are deluding themselves if they think the main problem of the game is in the writing.
 
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I must be misunderstanding you. Did you just say it's OK for a cRPG, and a BioWare cRPG at that, to not give the player a major say in how things pan out, story-wise? Sorry, but I thought that until DA2 big choices and big consequences (and with them branching stories/content) were the main attraction, sort of a BioWare niche lately (and ten years ago, a vanilla standard feature in most cRPGs, a major part of their appeal).

The game is telling a story, there is nothing that require that story to follow the Hero's journey or give the player choices & consequences regardless of the type of game or who makes it. Some people seems to think that everything have to resolve around them being BDH or that a RPG needs C&C, but I don't.

DAII was BioWare trying to brake away from something they have been accused of doing, i.e. following the same exact template for all their games. I don't see anything wrong in trying something different.
 
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I thought the DA2 story could have worked well, I liked the idea of the rags to riches story told over the course of many years. I also liked that they focused on some of the more interesting aspects of the DA world which were only given a passing look in DA:O.

But in the end the story just never grabbed me. I was a big fan of DA:O, and a big part of that was just because the story really grabbed me from the beginning. It made me care about the nobles slaughtering my family in my backstory, and then again about the betrayal in the battle of Ostrengar. DA2 just never achieved that level of caring or interest for me.

I still thought DA2 was a perfectly good game, it was just good and not great. But then I really liked DA:O, and so it was always going to be a tough act to follow for a sequel.
 
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I must be misunderstanding you. Did you just say it's OK for a cRPG, and a BioWare cRPG at that, to not give the player a major say in how things pan out, story-wise?

For a narrative game, it is okay. It is about telling a story and there are many ways to tell a story.
 
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It's amusing to read comments from people who have obviously played the game multiple times, then report on how "horrible" an experience it was.
There are many paths to satisfaction. Some go through quantity. Cognitive dissonance: you've just bought a piece of useless, not bargainable software and you want to find value in it. It must have since you've paid for it and are ready to allocate time to it. The game is not good. To find the value it does not have and that you fail to cope with (cognitive dissonance), you keep playing it or play it several times. The consequence is the opposite of the looked for effect: as the game has no value, is unsatisfying, the repetition of experiences only leads to more unsatisfaction.
Most of the issues can be fixed, and I don't think they're dumb enough to ignore all of the feedback or not to learn from their mistakes. So yeah, I remain hopeful. There were plenty of decent game play elements from DA2 that can be retained, yet still change it enough get the next game "right".

Bioware moved to something else. They changed course. They could be a poster child for firms selling a tradition along side their products, finding out that this tradition is now adverse to their future interests and thinking of ways to get rid of it. Part of the issue is they made their reputation on that tradition, marketed it as a distinguished feature of their products and gained loyalty from their customers thanks to that tradition. You were not only buying products but a tradition and your hard earned money went to support a whole vision, a whole model.

Enters the big, bad wolf (EA) that is not for or against the tradition but will bargain taking the blame for the change in tradition against the ownership of assets.

Bioware will wait until the old customers who were buying tradition along side a product are phased out by a new wave of customers.

This. The dungeon combat was okay, but that's about all there was in a dungeon. Plus the camera behavior, which just becomes utterly irksome over time. That's a big reason why I like isometric games; you're not having to constantly adjust the camera.[/QUOTE]
 
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I've said it before and I'll say it again: The biggest problem of DA2 is being a Dragon Age game. It would've been an OK game otherwise, but it had a lot to live up to, and it failed in that regard. Origins and Awakening were fantastic, and everyone (myself included) wanted more of the same, but BioWare changed the direction for some reason.
 
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I've said it before and I'll say it again: The biggest problem of DA2 is being a Dragon Age game. It would've been an OK game otherwise, but it had a lot to live up to, and it failed in that regard. Origins and Awakening were fantastic, and everyone (myself included) wanted more of the same, but BioWare changed the direction for some reason.

Yes, but in my opinion, it could have worked if they had made it a spinoff. The problem, as I see it, is it being a sequel, a way to experimental sequal (I'm talking about the whole structure of the game), and a sequel that even begins in time before the first game has concluded. If they had made it Dragon Age: Rise to Power (or whatever the subtitle was), at least they could have claimed that "this isn't actually the direction were taking the series, it's just something we wanted to try out." Testing the waters. Fair enough. But now they look totally clueless instead.
 
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