Dragon Age 2

[Vympel]

http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/

Rise to power over a decade is the hook.

And it sounds pretty cool.

[Highlord Laan]

Christ, and here I am still trying to get DAO to install correctly. Bedammed data errors.

Still. Looks interesting, though I am a bit disappointed that we apparently won't be able to keep playing our Warden from the last game a'la Mass Effect (if he/she survives, that is.)

Certainly be keeping an eye on this though.

[Ghost Rider]

I hope they actually explore more of the world at the very least. Still only three classes? Eh. Though there is a need of a massive look at the mechanics as stuns and freezing is far too godly.

[General Zod]

I'm not even going to give this a rental unless they somehow manage to make it not boring as shit. The first one put me to sleep.

[Lord Woodlouse]

I'm not even going to give this a rental unless they somehow manage to make it not boring as shit. The first one put me to sleep.

Given the millions who bought it last time seemed to enjoy it I doubt the story telling is going to be radically different.

Which is good news for me, I'm looking forward to some DA with knobs on.

[General Zod]

I'm not even going to give this a rental unless they somehow manage to make it not boring as shit. The first one put me to sleep.

Given the millions who bought it last time seemed to enjoy it I doubt the story telling is going to be radically different.

Which is good news for me, I'm looking forward to some DA with knobs on.

I'm less concerned with the story-telling (which was hilariously cliched), than the gameplay. The combat system is what bored me to tears.

[White Haven]

I didn't find the combat so much boring as I did...well...it was Potion Age: Origins. Why don't I just hook myself up to two IV lines, one blue, one red.

[Oscar Wilde]

I'm less concerned with the story-telling (which was hilariously cliched),

Isn't that (and bad morality systems) Bioware's thing? Writing stories that are bad and then the fanboys go "OH MY GOD BEST STORY EVER!?"

[adam_grif]

I'll be sold if they just solve the fucking technical issues with the game for launch. I'm not sure if they fixed it with later patches, but when I played there was this bit in RedCliffe where sometimes you just couldn't progress because the event to end the zombie fight wouldn't trigger, even when they were all dead. And other times, it didn't trigger because there was sme zombie stuck on geometry somewhere and you had to hunt for it.

Numerous other bugs and technical issues too.

[Stofsk]

I didn't find the combat so much boring as I did...well...it was Potion Age: Origins. Why don't I just hook myself up to two IV lines, one blue, one red.

I don't see why that's a bad thing. In any case, I find the combat challenging on the higher difficulties, which is refreshing from Bioware games - which are usually dreadfully easy. Like Mass Effect on Insanity isn't hard, it's just frustrating - because the bad guys get more HP and spam immunity so fights last for ages when they really shouldn't.

I'm less concerned with the story-telling (which was hilariously cliched),

Isn't that (and bad morality systems) Bioware's thing?

To a certain extent I can agree that morality systems in games (not just Bioware) are poorly implemented. Usually you don't get dark side points or whatever if you steal from people or break into their houses. On the other hand, I don't get the nerd rage that gets associated with this complaint. It turns out if you do something selfishly greedy, aggressively violent or downright despicable you get people who disapprove. Oh the horror.

[Stark]

You mean you're forced into false dilemnas with simplistic outcomes, right?

[General Zod]

To a certain extent I can agree that morality systems in games (not just Bioware) are poorly implemented. Usually you don't get dark side points or whatever if you steal from people or break into their houses. On the other hand, I don't get the nerd rage that gets associated with this complaint. It turns out if you do something selfishly greedy, aggressively violent or downright despicable you get people who disapprove. Oh the horror.

Morality systems in games are a joke when your choices are limited to being a soppy doormat of a sissy or a raging shitcock of an asshole who you want to punch in the face. Most bioware bethesda game writers are blubbering morons who couldn't understand the concept of moral ambiguity or subtlety if it sodomized them with a nailboard.

[adam_grif]

There was one decision in ME2 that was actually refreshingly unshit. You had to choose to rewrite all of these sentient machines to be friendly or destroy them. And brainwashing them all was the "good guy" choice. I was totally expecting it to be the other way around, and that pleasently surprised me.

The rest of them were largely standard of course.

[Stark]

Reversing the good/evil thing doesn't change the forced dilemnas or the simplistic reactions, it just reverses them. Its arguably even worse if there's no way to make an informed decision beforehand.

[General Zod]

Reversing the good/evil thing doesn't change the forced dilemnas or the simplistic reactions, it just reverses them. Its arguably even worse if there's no way to make an informed decision beforehand.

It always pisses me off when writers give you a sissy or asshole choice and the actual results when you pick them come out a lot mellower than you'd expect. It's like they don't know how to stay consistent or they're trolling you. (Oh wait. . . )

[Stofsk]

You mean you're forced into false dilemnas with simplistic outcomes, right?

I agreed that the morality systems in games are poorly implemented. I'm just a bit jaded. When gamers go 'lol where's the moral ambiguity', are they actually looking for moral ambiguity, or do they just want to murder and steal their way through the game without getting a dark side point?

AP had a decent morality system because there were actual consequences. I would love to see more RPGs feature that kind of dynamic, let the arms dealer go and get cheaper weapons or kill him/arrest him instead if you want to be a paragon. Be nice to someone and they give you a 10% discount, or be nasty to them and you only get a 5% instead. At least those sort of consequences make sense. Better than getting a 'dark side point' or whatever.

Morality systems in games are a joke when your choices are limited to being a soppy doormat of a sissy or a raging shitcock of an asshole who you want to punch in the face.

I actually agree. Take my example as well, usually you don't get punished or penalised if you pick pocket somebody or break into their house and steal their stuff. Violence is also something which gets a completely simplistic treatment. It's almost always acceptable to kill the kobold village you happen across in the wilderness, because kobolds are monsters. Of course, these kobolds haven't been hurting anyone, and yet here you come with your heavily armed party and massacre everyone and it's hella cool.

It's just that when you do act like a fucktard and people in the game disapprove... uh, isn't that a good thing? That at least someone in the game world is going 'lol you're a douche'?

[General Zod]

It's just that when you do act like a fucktard and people in the game disapprove... uh, isn't that a good thing? That at least someone in the game world is going 'lol you're a douche'?

I'd like to see options for acting evil beyond "be a raging douchecock". Make the main character capable of being smooth and efficient instead of a saturday morning cartoon villain. I mean for fuck's sake we have saturday morning cartoon villains with wider ranges of evil than most game writers are capable of managing.

[adam_grif]

Reversing the good/evil thing doesn't change the forced dilemnas or the simplistic reactions, it just reverses them. Its arguably even worse if there's no way to make an informed decision beforehand.

All Paragon decision are in a specific place on the wheel and all renegade decisions are likewise in another specific place. It tells you which is which, and you can easily predict what the outcome will be in morality point terms.

[adam_grif]

I would love to see more RPGs feature that kind of dynamic, let the arms dealer go and get cheaper weapons or kill him/arrest him instead if you want to be a paragon. Be nice to someone and they give you a 10% discount, or be nasty to them and you only get a 5% instead. At least those sort of consequences make sense. Better than getting a 'dark side point' or whatever.

See, there are decisions just like that in ME. At one point you have to get a garage pass to proceed in your mission, and there's a bunch of ways to do it:

- Help this guy out who has his own pass that he'll give you. He wants you to locate his copy of evidence of corruption of his boss.
- Extort the guy into testifying against his boss, and then the corporate police types will give you the pass.
- Extort the boss, tell him you have the evidence. He gives you the pass and a bunch of money as a bribe.
- Tell the boss that his secretary is spying on him, they end up killing each other, and you take the card off their corpses.

If you want to play both sides a bit, you get the bribe and card from him, then go straight to the police anyway and hand the evidence over. The guy goes kicking and screaming to jail, I walk out with my mission achieved and my bank account larger.

ME series was better than most in this regard. Paragon / Renegade wasn't supposed to be Good guy / Bad guy, it was supposed to be play-by-the-rules / do-what-it-takes, but the problem is that the designers forget that sometimes.

So we get stupid decisions where letting the Rachni queen go and do whatever she wants is the "paragon" decision? What? That makes sense as a light side answer, not as a play-by-the-rules answer. I'm pretty sure unleashing blights on the galaxy isn't in the rulebook. The inappropriately binary responses usually don't matter, but sometimes do. The aforementioned Rachni Queen is the worst offender in ME1, and in ME2 the worst is the end-game decision to blow up the base or give it to cerberus.

You have the only starship in the galaxy that can get to it, but if you don't blow it up, you automatically give it to cerberus? Why can't I give it to the council, the alliance, or anyone? I have to ferry the science teams there anyway, *I* say who goes there!

I wanted to give it to the geth

I'd like to see options for acting evil beyond "be a raging douchecock". Make the main character capable of being smooth and efficient instead of a saturday morning cartoon villain. I mean for fuck's sake we have saturday morning cartoon villains with wider ranges of evil than most game writers are capable of managing.

Renegade responses vary quite a bit, situatuionally. If you want to be smooth and efficient it's sometimes like that, and sometimes you go paragon. The game is to judge which is best for the situation. That's what I do usually - only morons go totally renegade or totally paragon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=-PjTuSQNLI4

Say what you will, rengeade responses always make the game amusing

[Ford Prefect]

All Paragon decision are in a specific place on the wheel and all renegade decisions are likewise in another specific place. It tells you which is which, and you can easily predict what the outcome will be in morality point terms.

That's ... not what he's talking about. It's not a game mechanic thing, it's a writing thing.

Anyway, the Rachni Queen decision is a lot more ambiguous than a lot of people are willing to give it credit for, and the Turian Councilor is right in both instances. It's not 'right' to commit genocide, even though the Rachni in the past were a civillisation ending threat, nor is it 'right' to just let them go on good faith, even with it being fairly obvious that they went crazy due to the Reapers. It's the one of only two decisions in the game I think was really worth anything to think about.

[Stofsk]

Letting the rachni queen go makes perfect sense as a paragon because killing her would be genocide, and genocide is strictly forbidden per the law - which goes perfectly with a 'by the book' approach to things.

EDIT: though some have argued that it's still a false dilemma as maybe it should be handballed over to the council to decide

although frankly, the council are bunch of douches so i wouldn't trust them any quicker than i can let sovereign kill them lol

[adam_grif]

Letting the rachni queen go makes perfect sense as a paragon because killing her would be genocide, and genocide is strictly forbidden per the law - which goes perfectly with a 'by the book' approach to things.

The "Paragon" response would be to let the council decide. She's not going anywhere, she's in a cage and can't get out. It's a 5 minute drive to go back to your ship. You can contact the council immediately...

Of the two choices presented, the PARAGON (where PARAGON = PLAY BY COUNCIL RULES) decision should be "wipe them out", because that's exactly what the council did during the Rachni War. They drove them to extinction, completely and totally, and showed zero mercy.

Killing them being renegade doesn't really make much sense, since it has zero impact on your mission. It only makes sense if renegade is "dark side points". It would maybe be renegade if you were ordered not to kill her, but killing her benefited you some way to get the job done at any cost or something.

But Renegade == dark side, so...

That's ... not what he's talking about. It's not a game mechanic thing, it's a writing thing.

He said it's bad when you can't make an informed decision. You do. It doesn't say "DO YOU AWNT PARAGON OR RENEGADE?" it goes "Do you want to kill them or rewrite them?", with the decisions in position so you know which will give you which points.

The blowing up vs rewriting IS ambiguous because it's not clear which is morally preferable. I think rewriting them is, but loooots of people disagree, and it's created nothing but heated discussions on Bioware forums from paragon-only-players who are angry that paragon decisions don't always line up perfectly with their morals.

[Stark]

All Paragon decision are in a specific place on the wheel and all renegade decisions are likewise in another specific place. It tells you which is which, and you can easily predict what the outcome will be in morality point terms.

You have no idea what I'm talking about. The VERY EXISTENCE of the 'paragon option' and 'renegade option' is 50% of why ME's conversation/choice/morality system is so broken; the system pressures writing to create two extreme opposed responses.

The Rachni thing is the stupidest, of course; why not just leave it there? UH OH NO THIRD OPTIONZ. Is there room for you to actually make a decision (ie 'I let it go because I believe in the rule of law' or 'I killed it because its not worth the risk'? No. Just 'are you good or evil press x/y'. Even more so, depending on the information the player had at the time, what appeared to be the 'right' or 'evil' decision might not have been if they had the full facts.

But then I hear having TWO morality bars fixed RPG morality systems.

Hey adam, you just quoted me talking about forced dilemnas as simplistic reactions, so you might not want to invent what I said, ok? The Rachni choice is particularly bad because going by ME1 intel it is absolutely right to destroy them, which is where 'informed decision' comes in. I know you don't play games with functional choice systems but do pay attention.

[Stofsk]

Letting the rachni queen go makes perfect sense as a paragon because killing her would be genocide, and genocide is strictly forbidden per the law - which goes perfectly with a 'by the book' approach to things.

The "Paragon" response would be to let the council decide. She's not going anywhere, she's in a cage and can't get out. It's a 5 minute drive to go back to your ship. You can contact the council immediately...

That would be more the neutral/i don't give a fuck response

But that should have been an option. It could have even lead to a scene where you can play advocate for the rachni queen appealing to let her go to the council or what not. They could have done far more with it than they did.

Of the two choices presented, the PARAGON (where PARAGON = PLAY BY COUNCIL RULES) decision should be "wipe them out", because that's exactly what the council did during the Rachni War. They drove them to extinction, completely and totally, and showed zero mercy.

I see. Let me repeat myself then, with added emphasis, since you completely and utterly ignored me. Letting the rachni queen go makes perfect sense as a paragon because killing her would be genocide, and genocideis strictly forbidden per the law - which goes perfectly with a 'by the book' approach to things.

The law btw is not only human law but the Council's law as well. The fact that they wiped them out thousands of years ago makes no fucking difference. A thousand years ago if some ruler murdered someone does that make it not murder to do the exact same thing a thousand years later? (please don't answer this question, I am being rhetorical)

Killing them being renegade doesn't really make much sense, since it has zero impact on your mission. It only makes sense if renegade is "dark side points". It would maybe be renegade if you were ordered not to kill her, but killing her benefited you some way to get the job done at any cost or something.

Killing her as a renegade makes perfect sense because you are placing your actions above the law, which both as a human soldier and as a Spectre you are sworn to uphold.

[Stark]

Yeah, like Ford said it's a very nuanced situation - one that Law and Order would spin into a heartstrings-pulling two-parter. In ME we got 'don't do it', 'no do it' and 'you must decide right now' and 'it will have no impact on anything'.

Frankly, a great element missed was that doing the 'wrong' or 'bad' thing would probably have made you a galactic hero, and exploring that could have been very interesting.