Dragon Age - Review @ Gamepex

Gamexpex writes in with their review of Dragon Age, sporting a score of 90%. An early quote:

From the surface, yes, Dragon Age looks like yet another western RPG. Yes, there are a few RPG cliches thrown into the mix as well. It's the execution of these cliches that sets the game apart. The story is gripping, deep, intellectual and mature. The developers had no qualms in throwing in aspects of political strife, the brutality of caste systems and well as prostitution into the story – the amazing part is none of these feel forced or juvenile. The other amazing thing is that the game doesn't force you to deal with these issues if you don't feel like it. You wanna be a jerk and tell everyone to piss off? Go ahead, the story will still progress.

More information.

You wanna be a jerk and tell everyone to piss off? Go ahead, the story will still progress.

Of course, some people might take that as an indication that your selection of dialog choices doesn't matter. On my second playthrough, just mashed numbers until I got to the end of the conversations. Not much changed.

Originally Posted by Yeesh
Of course, some people might take that as an indication that your selection of dialog choices doesn't matter. On my second playthrough, just mashed numbers until I got to the end of the conversations. Not much changed.

You lost me. In your first sentence you seem to say that the review is wrong in saying that dialog choices don't matter, but you follow that up by stating that in your second play trough you just mashed numbers and nothing changed. To me the two statements seem to contradict one another or am I reading things the wrong way?

Nice to see a more realistic review of DA, even though 90% is still a bit high imo.

Originally Posted by Darkion
You lost me. In your first sentence you seem to say that the review is wrong in saying that dialog choices don't matter, but you follow that up by stating that in your second play trough you just mashed numbers and nothing changed. To me the two statements seem to contradict one another or am I reading things the wrong way?

Wha…? Random selection of dialog choices affects nothing, therefore conversation choices must not matter. What's contradictory about that?

Of course, it's not always true, as the game does present you some choices. But even for the big ones, you mostly end up in the same place later on no matter what you chose. I don't think supporting the other dwarf for king is going to change the outcome in the slightest. But I'm ready to be wrong.

Well, not a lot of games change fundamentally based on dialogue choices - and those few that do, tend to lack in other areas as it requires an absurd amount of work to accomplish.

That's one of the biggest problems with *c*RPGs. They don't want to spend too much time on bits that only obscure choices will unlock. The big parts of the game story will go ahead no matter what you do.

That said by the end I felt that the choices I made in DA did have an effect.