I didn’t think the origin stories added much to the first game, to be honest. Aside from a few characters showing up later and a different first half hour of the game, there wasn’t much point to them. Oh sure, as a mage of the circle I could role-play a little bit in my responses to things, but there wasn’t much point to them. I won’t miss them.
Dragon Age 2 is just a different story, in that your character is a certain person with a specific origin. I have no problem with that.
I have no problem with that either, it’s just that I just recently played a game like that, by the same company, called Mass Effect, and I assumed, wrongly it seems, Dragon Age was a multiclass RPG instead of more of the same.
Sure, when something is good we tend to want more but come on…
- The Witcher 2 - single character story RPG
- Dragon Age 2 - single character story RPG
- Mass Effect 3 - single character story RPG
…and all coming out this year.
Again, I’ll eventually buy all of them, it’s just that variety, for me, would have been better.
@Joe M: well, that’s obvious, I reckon. But, and this is just me pissing in the wind, doesn’t it strike you that they are simply trying to capitalize on the recent success of the Mass Effect model and the success of the Dragon Age franchise itself by pushing out an “easier” or “faster” version of the game?
OrfBC
1603
I haven’t been following this thread that closely, but how are DA2 and ME2 single-character RPGs? If it’s because you only determine the appearance of and name a single character, then Bioware hasn’t made a multi-character RPG since Icewind Dale (if that was even them).
Joe_M
1604
Well it’s still a multiclass RPG, you simply have one race to choose from and on that score I agree with you. I absolutely loved how differently people treated my city elf compared to a mage or human noble. That sort of variety made several replays far more interesting to me. Furthermore, if they were interested in branching out to other races I don’t believe the story would have been a limiting factor: so you’re an elf slave who’s survived the blight (or something) instead of a human… it doesn’t pose any huge challenges were they interested in giving us that sort of choice.
Anyhow, I’m torn on the subject. I want a new DA game every two years. I love the world, the people and Bioware’s storytelling. If I had to choose between origins stories and playing the game next month, well, it’s not a hard choice.
Here’s one good reason they didn’t do multiple origins again: Both dwarf origins combined only accounted for 5% of the playthroughs of the game. That was a waste of resources no matter how you look at it.
Only 5% of Bioware players are awesome enough to play the best origins in the game, I guess.
It’s hard to get excited about the romance options when you’re a dwarf.
You didn’t see austin powers in gold member, did you?
Enidigm
1610
If only the Origins weren’t so completely shallow and without consequence. I played them as a sightseeing tour of areas you might otherwise not get to see outside of missions, letting my character move around at a walking pace. It was an ambitious attempt, and i appreciated the game for it, but for all of the effort in making them they didn’t/couldn’t carry the Origins into divergent paths in the game itself. There were only a handful of moments, all completely optional and for flavor, where your Origin made a difference. I never, ever, ever felt that my character’s Origin influenced in a meaningful sense anything in the game, esp. compared to the skill class.
Hey, my dwarf rogue had no problem romancing… uh… I think it was Morrigan. I guess? The Bioware romances all run together for me.
I’m just trying to explain the perspective that other people have.
There wasn’t much written into the game, but it influenced the way I played. Especially dwarftown as a dwarf noble. It’s one of the two times I remember roleplaying in an RPG in the last 4 years (the other recent one being Alpha Protocol).
That wasn’t them, it was Black Isle. I’m trying to think, but I don’t think Bioware has -ever- done an RPG where you personally create more than one member of your party. Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 definitely don’t count (sure, you can use multiplayer to fake it, but it’s not the same thing). NWN doesn’t even really have a party. KOTOR, nope. Jade Empire, nope (and since I found companions more useful for passive buffs than melee, that was almost single character for me in combat). Mass Effect 1 and 2, nope. Dragon Age, nope…
This seems like as good a thread as any to quote PC Gamer’s blurb on BG2 for the “Top 100 Games” in their March 2011 issue:
Troy: All the Mass Effects and Dragon Ages in the world can’t escape the Shadow of BioWare’s Sprawling D&D epic. On the other hand, it also gave birth to the now-de rigeur (and frequently annoying) relationship mechanic, so I guess nothing’s perfect.
I really hope that BioWare someday has the courage to drop their getting-laid minigames, or at least not do it in every single game. They would probably lose 95% of the people who currently post on their forums though.
To do so, they’ll need to embark on a hero’s journey.
Get used to it. In games that try to make npcs appear more realistic/alive, npcs having relationships of varying degrees with the player is a certainty and makes the world feel more alive. It also helps keep the player from just thinking of them as quest dispensers as much.
They are completely optional and if even the option offends you that much there are always games with lifeless npcs (ie most of them).
Also, at least we aren’t paying Leilana for sex and then running her over with a horse so we can take back our money.
Quoted for truthiness.
The problem isn’t the origins, though, it’s the way BioWare designs campaigns. Stuff like the Origin stories in DA:O are a perfect excuse to create a bunch of radically different & conflicting paths, through the same chunk of campaign content.
But instead of doing that, they used the Origin stories as very little more than insanely long crash-courses in “this is how build X plays, before it gains any of the abilities that distinguish it from builds Y & Z”.
Speaking of which, I really hope BioWare has gotten rid of whatever office fiend ate all the documentation last time. And by documentation, I don’t mean DA:O-style “let’s be so vague & nebulous about every single thing in the game, that nobody can make an informed decision about anything based on the information we’ve provided”. Because honestly, that kind of “ha-ha, made ya look” uselessness is even more irritating than a total lack of information.
ShivaX
1618
The best romance in any game was Garrus and my female Shepard. Partly because I didn’t know it was even an option (I’d ignored all the romances in the first game) and partly because the characters actually had a longstanding history to them. Thats hard to pull off in a single game really.
Shepard and Garrus made sense in a comrades-in-arms kinda way. Dragon Age gave somewhat of that option in that most of the romances were introduced very early on as characters giving you time to theoretically build up to that sort of familiarity, but it didn’t quite get there in a lot of respects. The time gap between ME and ME2 and the situation probably helped it even more in that regard. Maybe DA2 can pull it off with the decade-long gap somehow.
Overall most romances end up being fairly cheesy anyway. Get Person A to Like Level X and they’ll fall in love with you or something. It can add a lot to the story (as I felt it did in ME2) or it can be crap filler. In DA the only relationship that felt right to me ended up being my Dwarf Rogue and Morrigan. Every other playthrough it always felt… off. Like I was reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book and picked the wrong option and lost.
Tony_M
1619
I agree. Both of the Dwarven origins made you feel like an actual person from a real culture, instead of “generic tough guy who materializes out of nowhere to save the world” that is the staple of most RPGs.
Its one of the few RPGs where I found myself choosing conversation options based on what I thought my character would say, rather than just the response which would result in the best outcome. (Which I guess is what Tim means by roleplaying).
Tony
hong
1620
Because Mass Effect was better.
NEXT!
