The Glade 4.0

http://pc.ign.com/articles/118/1189627p1.html

Personally, I though DA2 was a better game, both from gameplay and story perspectives.

I never played DA1 or DA: Awakenings. I thought Dragon Age Origins was so good I didn't want anymore.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Length and the completely unique areas are the only things DAO had over DA2. DA2 did everything else 100% better.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

That's not saying much for a Bioware game. I really wish I understood this forum's fascination with bad RPGs with bad writers.

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It's because you hate popular things even if they are actually good. There is no better writers out there than the ones that work for Bioware.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Uh.. as a general rule, video game writers are horrible (as writers go). You might be able to make a case that bioware's writers are better than most video game writers, but as a general rule, writing in video games sucks....

Before we get into a futile discussion about the qualify of writing, I'd like to point out that Raltar **** up his is/are usage.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Oh well.

I blame the California public schooling system.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Futile? You want futile? I'll give you futile...

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/futile

There, now THAT is futile...

None of the Dragon Age games have been able to hold my attention past a handful of hours. I've really tried to like the game, but it just doesn't grab me. The itemization in DA2 was laughable and made me not even want to think about production values later in the game.

Mass Effect, on the other hand... I'm 50 hours deep into my third play of part 1, and probably more time than that put into part 2 before ME3 comes out.

I thought the story and plot development for DA2 were crippled by the fact that there were three zones. If they port that gameplay into DAO open-world style environment I'd be happy.

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Lenas is right about itemization. The lack of ability to outfit your party members with anything but weapons was annoying at best, and stupid beyond belief at worse.

True. But I don't think it's a stretch to say that Bioware's writers are very, very good. Their writers are far from your average video game writers. Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Knights of the Old Republic are hardly typical game stories. They don't follow the general rule. There may be better games out there, in terms of gameplay. But there have not been games with better stories. These games have, by far, some of the best characters, back stories, and plots in the entire gaming industry. And they are all made by Bioware. Hell, one of Bioware's writers is an accomplished novelist, with another Revan (KotOR) novel on the way. Definitely, not someone who I'd say is a sucky video game writer.

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

Well, seeing as how they haven't written anything knew since KotOR, I'm trying to figure out where you came up with this notion ...

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Riiight. Since YOU don't like them or their games, it obviously means that all of their stories since KotOR are exactly the same, with no changes at all. That makes total sense.

Why do you hate them so much, Khross? Did they touch you in your no-no spot as a child? Is that where all this Bioware angst comes from?

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

It's his job. Haters gonna hate

I'm not really sure how you can mention DA2's lack of itemization and then say how awesome Mass Effect is. You have more itemization in DA2 than you do in Mass Effect 2. And the choices in DA2 compared to ME1 are just as meaningful. Sure, ME1 has a bunch of different guns and armor, but they may as well be the same for all the differences between them.

Don't get me wrong...ME is super **** awesome, but you can't say a game is shitty because of something and praise another when it's basically the same in that area(and even worse in the case of ME2).

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Mass Effect doesn't give me 10 items with the same names and different stats. That's what I meant. Also, ME2 and DA2 handle inventory completely different and in ME2 it's not even really a consideration. You automatically use the most powerful weapons available. I'm okay with that.

My complaints about DA2 are not limited to the inventory system. That's just what immediately came to mind, because it's one of the things that made me say, "What the ****?" out loud.

+1

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This. Other than Raltar's grammar.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Do not let Khross' hate-on distract you. Bioware's big hits have mostly just been remakes of the first chapter of Neverwinter Nights. Four different districts to go to, searching for four different pieces of the plague cure. They just added voice acting.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

And yet when Jade Empire, ME1, ME2, DAO and DA2 deviate wildly from that formula, they're accused of being the same thing. DA2's plot actually was about the most unique I've ever seen in a video game. Brilliant writing from the narrative standpoint, too. Not to mention the humor inherent in the dialogue of both games in the Dragon Age series so far...and nevermind that the generally labelled "best" of bioware's games (KotOR) actually does follow that formula. (And was still an incredible game)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

ME1 didn't deviate from that formula at all, let alone wildly. What do you think you were doing on Feros, Virmire, Therum, and Noveria? Likewise in DAO, what do you think the four treaties were? They followed the exact same story as NWN.

I can't comment on DA2 because I never played it, but the only reason Jade Empire and ME2 deviated from the formula was because they were constructed in a considerably more linear format. ME2 is just missions in a first person shooter, while Jade Empire was levels in a platformer - that's what the games were, rather than role-playing games. The reason why those two games "broke the mold" is because Bioware went back to a much more traditional formula for the style of game they were making. However, Aribeth's sudden but inevitable betrayal was a big feature in Jade Empire's story, so I can't say Bioware strayed too far from the mold.

Look, I enjoyed all of these games - some more than others - but good writing? Best writing? They take NWN's outline apart line by line, put it into a tumbler, mix it up, and put the pieces back together in a different order.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Which every story and epic throughout human history and before has been doing for 10,000+ years. Nothing is original. Paint with a wide enough brush, and you'll catch everything in any generalization. That's why websites like TVTropes exist. We don't have any new peices for storytelling, ever. All that matters is how well the peices are used.

You're equating the fact that various RPGs by bioware had 3-5 major acts with tasks the protagonists must perform before reaching the climax of the plot. Wow. To make that more original, we could go to 1-2 acts, or 6-7 acts. Because the tasks one needs to perform are already completely different, in every act.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

But that's the point. Bioware doesn't even make a pretense of using *different* pieces. It just paints a new color on the same jigsaw puzzle and people call it brilliant and creative.

Also.. I'm tired of epics. Stop making me the **** chosen one who has to save the universe.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades