3181

Holy fuck Origin does not auto patch games. I had to download a patch. What the fuck?

Goddamn what a shitty service.

3182

You need Merrill in your party. Voiced by Eve Myles of Torchwood.

An example, with a little NSFW dialog.

She has lots of funny “fish out of water” dialogues with Varric (who affectionately calls her “Daisy”) and Isabela.

But yeah, AoE spells are ridiculously powerful in DA2, though they don’t feel quite as epic as the ones in the first game.

3183

Now that, that right there, that is fail.

3184

I am having fun with the original Dragon Age, and have the sequel waiting for me on Steam to play. I am hopeful that it will be as fun as the original and maybe address some of the minor quirks the first one had.

3185

Good luck with that.

3186

That’s the normal approach you might expect in a sequel, but it’s not what Bioware did at all. It’s still a good game in its own particular way. Just be sure to calibrate your expectations.

3187

Clearly Aeon is a man of subtle and refined tastes!

I especially like Dual Wield rogues. That means I’m using tittysaurus (the duelist trainer from the original) a ton, and it’s hilarious to have her swoop across the field and make high level enemies go BOOM with knives. How she flips around with those ungainly breasts I have no idea, but she sure does it with panache.

They provide buoyancy, thus making those leaps require less effort.

Aveline and Count Boobula have amazing dialog.

All of the NPCs have great dialogue. This is the first Bioware game I can recall, all the way back to Baldurs Gate, where none of the NPCs are annoying. Well, one of them is, but you get plenty of opportunities to put him in his place, and after that he’s more pitiable than annoying.

3188

Murbella, would you like to talk about Mass Effect with me?

3189

Strange, I managed to play it while almost never switching characters just fine.

Now, this would be fine if you could just control one character 100% of the time, but your party members are so stupid (standing on top of repeating traps, running in front of dragons when they are mages) that you need to be frequently taking control of them.

Lern2playkthx

in jade empire your party member’s main purpose (other than flavor/dialog) is to give you a major passive buff.

I notice that you said party member’s singular, and not party members’ plural. In this, you are correct.

3190

They almost get there. There’s still an underlying whiff of Bioware structure to them. It’s mostly in the heart-to-heart moments though. The banter while adventuring is always pleasing to the ears.

3191

There are people out there who can describe the DA2 version of Anders as not annoying? (Or, less significantly, Carver?) Wow.

3192

Actually, if you wanted you could just use one gun.

then had my choice of an array of abilities that would all result in the death of said enemy so were functionally all but identical.

Did you ever play a sentinel, vanguard or engineer?

I could use any combination of NPC party members because it didn’t matter, they all contributed roughly the same moderate-but-nowhere-near-mine killing power. Terrain was relevant only in that you needed to duck behind identikit, immersion-breaking waist high cover in order to fight.

The default difficulty setting in ME2 is calibrated to support the overarching theme of Shepard kicking butt against massive odds, as the most badass human in the galaxy. In this, it succeeds brilliantly: the enemies that would destroy any lesser mortal serve only as cannon fodder to the first human Spectre and his/her team of misfits. Of course, in doing so, some tradeoffs had to be made, and they came mostly in terms of providing the sort of tactical challenge that combat monkeys would want.

It is true that on normal, ME2 foes do not put up a particularly hard fight, and so do not require deep strategising to defeat. This is what higher difficulties are for. It is strange (or perhaps not so strange) that so much thought can be put into complaining about a situation while so little action is taken to rectify it.

In Jade Empire, every combat style required you to approach combat differently to some extent. Every foe had different attack patterns and immunities, requiring a changed approach. I had to balance the chi and focus costs of magic and weapon styles against the healing or (bonus damage, wasn’t it?) of focus mode. I also had to factor in status effects (for both sides), could perform area attacks when surrounded, and dodge or block as appropriate. And then of course there was the choice whether to use one of the multiple potent passive abilities of your party members or have them enter the fray and help you kill things directly.

… or you could just mash the buttons. Seems an awfully simpler way to do it.

3193

Anders is not particularly annoying, no.

(Or, less significantly, Carver?) Wow.

He is a feature, not a bug.

Also, you have ppl on this here mailing list who can conveniently forget Anomen, Jaheira and Carth when it suits them. Surely they would extend others the same courtesy.

3194

This is also the closest that any Bioware game has ever got to doing away with NPCs with daddy issues. That’s significant.

3195

Well, I guess at least this guy would agree that it is streamlining, not dumbing down:

This thread makes me want to play jade empire again,

3196

Title hunting in Guild Wars, I think. Never fear, I got here in the end!

3197

I’m not denying the progress.

I was just thinking about the banter some more. Not only is it fun, I think that’s where I got most of the characterization from. When Fenris voices his prejudice toward Anders and Merrill, I remember he’s got some serious problems with mages. But when he tells me his detailed story at his house, I turn off. Same with Varric teasing Merrill about moving to the big city, compared to her little stories to me about how overwhelmed she is. Aeon’s quotes from Isabella and Aveline tell me more about them as characters than what I remember from the dialogue events.

It’s really quite remarkable. Maybe they should drop the companion quests and loyalty crisis points completely. Move all that effort to party dynamics and interjections during normal quests and dialogue. I guess part of the problem is a gamer thing: if you don’t force them to interact with characters, they might stick to one party the entire time.

3198

The problem with the party banter is that from the player’s viewpoint, it’s completely passive. This is a game, so you’d ideally want to be able to interact with and influence things that happen around you – in this case, your companions.

I’d argue that companion quests are critical to the new Bioware formula, precisely because personality and characterisation are a big part of it. If the game involves talking to people and influencing their beliefs/attitudes, it would be odd that the people who have the biggest roles in the game were immune to that.

3199

Oh yeah I forgot about the influence aspect. I’ve never been interested in it, but I can see where they’re going with it and why that’s important for their design.

Jeez, once again this is another “no wonder!” when it comes to how I react to these new Bioware games.

3200

I’m trying to be positive. People always tell me I’m too cynical, so I’m trying to take a “glass half full” approach to Dragon Age II.