Dragon Age 2

[Aaron]

Am I reading that right?

If you get banned/temp banned on a Bioware forum, you can't run your game?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Beat it. Not entirely sure what to think.

There was some bugginess in act 3, several quests didn't seem to work right, and I was getting a lot of weird results and conversations. Some of the writing got a little dubious in places, too.

spoilerzlol
Spoiler

Fuck, Merrill is a stupid bitch
Fuck, Anders is a stupid bitch
Fuck, even Orsino decided he was missing out and had to join the stupid bitch party
Fuck, Isabela is a stupid bitch too (most useless character ever, who incidentally doesn't even remotely resemble her DA:O incarnation)

With stupid bitchery being so in vogue though, I think I need to award a special commendation for Not Being A Stupid Bitch to Templar Cullen, who not only manages to shape up since DA:O, but stands up to quite a bit of stupid bitchery and comes out clean.

[LadyTevar]

Verhec: A Dwarf, and Elf, and a Human walk into a bar...
Anders: The human says "Good thing you're short, that hurt like hell!"
Verhec: If you've heard it why didn't you stop me?
Anders: And waste a perfectly good setup?

I really can't complain about the companion's comments, they have all been just as amusing as in DA:O and DA:A

[adam_grif]

Am I reading that right?

If you get banned/temp banned on a Bioware forum, you can't run your game?

It's a bit more complex. If you get temp banned by a bioware mod or something no, but if somebody reports your post, it's apparently handled by a different system and this includes banning your EA account tied to your BWare social account should the report get followed through on.

[White Haven]

Out of curiosity, Gaius, what incidents were you referring to with your 'stupid bitch' rant? I'll grant you one or two of them, but some of them seem...dubious.

[Aaron]

Am I reading that right?

If you get banned/temp banned on a Bioware forum, you can't run your game?

It's a bit more complex. If you get temp banned by a bioware mod or something no, but if somebody reports your post, it's apparently handled by a different system and this includes banning your EA account tied to your BWare social account should the report get followed through on.

Wow.

Glad I don't post on their forums.

[Losonti Tokash]

The issue seems to be less that he is forbidden from using the game and more that he can't activate it until his ban expires. Not that that makes it much better, but at least he'll be able to play soonish.

Of course, if he'd bought it on console he wouldn't have to worry about that, would he?

[adam_grif]

The issue seems to be less that he is forbidden from using the game and more that he can't activate it until his ban expires. Not that that makes it much better, but at least he'll be able to play soonish.

Of course, if he'd bought it on console he wouldn't have to worry about that, would he?

Oh you.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Out of curiosity, Gaius, what incidents were you referring to with your 'stupid bitch' rant? I'll grant you one or two of them, but some of them seem...dubious.

Some of it probably came down to how I played it, of course, and I'll be curious to see just how Alpha Protocol this game can be on subsequent playthroughs.
Spoiler

Merrill got the entire Dalish clan killed with her stupid shit
In the middle of Meredith and Orsino being at each other's throats and the fate of the city hanging on a razor's edge, Anders thinks it would be a fantastic idea to blow up the Chantry
Orsino, after helping me fend off waves of Templars and generally being a swell guy, just out of the blue decides to go all super blood mage and turn himself into a gigabomination
Isabela, much like Anders, thinks it's a fantastic idea to deliberately antagonize the current crisis point, and runs off with the Qunari's sacred book, never to be seen again

[LadyTevar]

So.. what were your friendships to these people, Brother-Gaius? Were they friends? Rivals? What?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

i'm a friendly kinda guy

The only people I wasn't really friends with were the ones I didn't use much, Isabela and Fenris. I stuck to purple 'wise-ass' dialog most of the time, with blue/green 'good' responses now and then. Merrill had a lot of back-and-forth in terms of friend/rival points though, mostly because I tried to tell her her shit was stupid.

[Losonti Tokash]

Spoiler

How did she get the whole clan killed? In mine, Marethari allowed the demon to possess her and then we fought it the old fashioned way.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Spoiler

The same. The keeper got possessed but then the whole clan freaked out and went apeshit.

[Losonti Tokash]

Spoiler

Ah. In mine a few wanted to string her up but the other Dalish talked them down.

[Seggybop]

Finished the game, weeee.

overall, I'm kind of disappointed.

The scale of the game is way smaller. 95% of the game takes place within the city Kirkwall, and the remainder is immediately surrounding it. There are only a few basic terrain types: nice city, grungy city, undercity, cave, dwarven tunnel, seaside, and mountainside. Of these, there are only a few examples of each. There was seriously more variation in the landscape in the first three hours of DA:O, going from your newb zone to Ostagar to the Korcari Wilds and to Lothering.

By far the most aggravating example of this is that all of the dungeons are literally copy-paste reused for different quests under different names. You'll go to some cave on the side of the mountain to kill a monster for one quest, then for the next one enter a cave from inside the city that amazingly enough has exactly the same layout. There are probably only around 4 or 5 basic dungeon maps replicated for all the relevant quests.

Basically what this means is that you spend almost the entire game running back and forth through the same zone doing extremely similar quests, usually involving entering someone's cloned house or cave and killing the criminal gangs or rogue mages inside.

I could keep going on for a while, but I don't want to be excessively negative. It was really entertaining; the real problem is only that there's so much less than the original.

The final boss fight, at least, was awesome. Way cooler than anything in DA1. Unsurprisingly, though, the story didn't actually end when the game did. Blarg.

btw I had exactly the same results as Gaius described. Yeah, it was completely ridiculous.
It was kind of obvious that a few of these morons were plotting something mindbogglingly stupid, but I was reluctant to flat-out refuse to help them for fear of them dropping out of party =/

I am going to totally blow your mind. Load up D2, find something to attack, hold down the right (I think) mouse button over it.

hhhhhnnnnnnnnggggghhhh >__<

[LadyTevar]

I am annoyed. Nit's been playing His Game, and I'm not able to get anywhere on mine

[adam_grif]

Spoiler

The same. The keeper got possessed but then the whole clan freaked out and went apeshit.

The top and middle dialogue option makes them attack you, the bottom one talks them out of it. Which was strange but not unwelcome, lol.

[dragon]

I am annoyed. Nit's been playing His Game, and I'm not able to get anywhere on mine

Hum looks like wife aggro Nit had better work on his aggro control a bit Only 1 pc?

[LadyTevar]

I had heard Sten say that they kept their Mages locked up... but DAMN.

The Qun takes your names, gives you Roles, and declares that Mages need to be leashed and chained like mad dogs. Sten, I respected... these Qunari, not so much ... especially when they threw a fit over a mage in my party.

[SylasGaunt]

Oh you should have seen how that retrieval squad reacted when they found out my Hawke was a mage.

Spoiler

In the middle of Meredith and Orsino being at each other's throats and the fate of the city hanging on a razor's edge, Anders thinks it would be a fantastic idea to blow up the Chantry
Orsino, after helping me fend off waves of Templars and generally being a swell guy, just out of the blue decides to go all super blood mage and turn himself into a gigabomination
Isabela, much like Anders, thinks it's a fantastic idea to deliberately antagonize the current crisis point, and runs off with the Qunari's sacred book, never to be seen again

Spoiler

Remember Anders isn't entirely in his right head there. Justice/Vengeance seems to be doing a number on him.

Yeah Orsino suddenly deciding 'You fuckers want blood magic? FINE!' made me kinda A shame really because I liked Orsino a lot.

On my game Isabela came back and handed over said sacred book.. granted I still had to fight their leader in single combat to keep him from hauling her back to 'submit to the Qun'. Of course that fight turned into something out of Benny Hill since all my best offensive spells were fire/lightning based and the Arishok is fucking immune to both of them. As a result the big epic duel between Hawke and the Arishok was me running in figure 8s around the pillars and taking pot shots at him until he died.

Oh also, I had a run in with Zevran.. and talked him into a threesome with my Femme-Hawke and Isabela.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Spoiler

I noticed Zevran show up and help me in the final battle, which I thought was pretty funny. Each 'phase' against Meredith some NPC you've worked with shows up to help, and I was glad to see Cullen too. It ticked me off that Thrask died though. Some of the game's latter bits really feel KotOR2-esque in their random incoherence.

[Losonti Tokash]

Spoiler

Orsino was funding the guy who murdered Hawke's mother.

[Vympel]

Finally getting my copy today. Took long enough to ship.

[Lagmonster]

The scale of the game is way smaller. 95% of the game takes place within the city Kirkwall, and the remainder is immediately surrounding it.

The game didn't feel small, to me, it felt personal. I liked the fact that I wasn't expected to stomp all over a continent with the fate of the world hanging in the balance; I especially loved the fact that my actions ended up having a global political impact (setting sparks for wars and upsetting power balances) even though the motive and reach of my actions remained personal (protect family, get ahead in life, help friends). It was a good fucking idea and probably the first time that Bioware has written a story that tries to expand on your actions; In Mass effect and Dragon Age 1, you knew that the world was about to end and you were all that stood in evil's way, because you were basically Jesus or He Man or something. Dragon Age 2 made a better attempt at the ripples in the pond effect.

btw I had exactly the same results as Gaius described. Yeah, it was completely ridiculous.
It was kind of obvious that a few of these morons were plotting something mindbogglingly stupid, but I was reluctant to flat-out refuse to help them for fear of them dropping out of party =/

You cannot play DA2 and be greedy, with the idea that your companions are possessions to aid you. You have to play it with a sense of purpose; you have to latch onto the ideals you want your character to have and then follow through, or else your character plays like a schizophrenic puppeteer. To that end, my I Am The Law warrior: Spoiler

turned over Isabella to face justice even when she came back to 'do the right thing', stood in Merill's way every time she even started prattling on about her mirror, and shivved the fuck out of Anders for being a mass-murdering asshole. I got laid a lot less, but Anders and Isabella deserved it, and Merrill just needed a smack in the head. There wasn't a blood mage in that WHOLE GAME whose efforts didn't end badly, so it didn't take a genius to see Merrill was a tragedy waiting to happen.

[Vympel]

^ Indeed. I'm most of the way through Act 1 (my copy only arrived the other day) and I'm already trying to take a distinctly pro-mage attitude, which is informed by a lifetime of knowing Bethany. However, that may change. I've already seen a mage turn into an Abomination once in the game.