Dragon Age 2 - Sex, Potions and DA2

Dhruin

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IGN's Contrarian Corner takes a look at Dragon Age 2. The author confesses clumsily to not liking fantasy fare to start with but the real criticism is the old-school combat mechanics. Despite being so wrong, the article shows some insight in knowing the action side and the tactics side of the combat are in conflict:
As finely charted as its dialogue and story decisions are, Dragon Age 2 has a dull underbelly in its combat. BioWare is stingily holding onto a vision of combat taken from the dark days of PC game design, when a phrase like "damage per second" could be taken seriously. In the days of Baldur's Gate you watched your characters from above, delighting as they drained numbers from enemies in minutely varied ways. The crucial metric was time, and so combat proficiency became a kind of SAT test for wizards. You'd have to balance the hit points you could extract from enemies each second against the amount of stamina or mana you had, how much damage your characters could take, and how long you could postpone total depletion with healing items.

The great innovation in Dragon Age 2 is that you're no longer looking down on your characters but are now tethered to them with an over-the-shoulder camera angle. Which is to say BioWare has made a superficial change to presentation as a way of covering for the fact that the system is still the same basic design as it was all those years ago. As a number balancing game it's satisfying in the same way that Sudoku is, but it really shouldn't have a place in a story game about moral equivalencies. It's got an opaque but machine-like efficiency that contradicts the theme of moral grayness.
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This kind of article is why gaming "journalism" requires those quotes I put around it.

What a nightmare.
 
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I like the title.
 
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I actually liked the article, it's actually quite funny in an analytical sort of way. It's from the point of view of someone not necessarily invested in all the RPG tropes as we are.

It's like a dissection of a lowbrow horror film by a drama teacher, kinda stuffy and demeaning at times but not necessarily wrong in the analysis.
 
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It's articles like these that made da2 what it was and ensures da3 will be worse.
 
I have no idea how DA3 could be worst…..but you are most likely right…
(can i pre-order now for DA3 LOL LOL LOL)
 
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what are you talking about, it was almost entirely negative towards DA2…

Did you even read it?

Yes, I was mainly referring to their disdain for old school combat systems. To me it seemed he was saying bioware was " holding onto a vision of combat taken from the dark days of PC game design". Mainly bg and dao.

Seeing as combat was more action based in da2 seems he would want even more action for da3.
 
The article is off. Using notions wrongly.

Any damage can be put under the form of DPS. All it takes is to sum up the damage done during a time duration and divide. This is clearly what the authoer does. That is not DPS. DPS was mostly developped to fit RTS requirements in balancing factions. Neither BG nor DAO were DPS based.

BG was a hit/miss (parry?) [a strike by strike]with various checks/saves system. DPS do not come directly even if they can be estimated.

RTS introduced DPS to cope with that difficult as it made balancing a nightmare.

DAO was a hit/miss/dodge/parry system. Not a DPS system like, again. I think WOW has a DPS system, which means that the damage done to an enemy can be computed reliably and straightforwardly before the initiation of the damage. But I never played that game. It is very strange that the author sees it DPS an old school gaming notion as it is a newer addition to the system.

His opposition of time and tactics is shaky too. The only requirement for tactics when it comes to time, is the time required to make a decision and opt for a tactical move. Slower does not mean more tactical.

DA2 is weak in the department tactics for three causes:

-BG relied on an established (but non permanent) battle system which bears strong references and allows the design of strategies and consequently tactics to support the strategical approach.

Bioware has not yet managed to stabilize their battle system as they moved from a hit/miss/parry/dodge system (all in auto attack) to a system of all hit/glancing blow/manual dodge. A complete overhaul that gives out no references and do not allow carrying over strategies from one to another.

-The tactics set box is not reliable enough to implement decisively groups tactics. Even when a configuration is accurately identified, the application of tactics behind remains shaky

-the wave system that destroys the terrain control tactical feature.
 
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