Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
Clearance Level Ultra
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Post by Gileadan on Aug 3, 2016 20:50:37 GMT
See I thought the smallness and familiar environments actually helped give the city more character, not less. I'm honestly glad it worked so well for you I wish it had done the same for me. The small size of the city and the mostly static NPCs gave me the feeling that nothing ever happened in Kirkwall when Hawke wasn't around to trigger a scripted event. Lively environments were never BioWare's forte... likely because the engines they used for their games were not well suited for that. Ironically, what added most character to the city for me were the "Band of Three" notes about the Veil around Kirkwall... and that was just a quick-fix by the writers when they noticed too late that they had kinda forgotten to add sane mages to the cast of characters. It's a bit sad that they're making "exploration focused" games recently - which is just PR speak for "no cities".
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Post by Addictress on Aug 3, 2016 20:56:41 GMT
See I thought the smallness and familiar environments actually helped give the city more character, not less. I'm honestly glad it worked so well for you I wish it had done the same for me. The small size of the city and the mostly static NPCs gave me the feeling that nothing ever happened in Kirkwall when Hawke wasn't around to trigger a scripted event. Lively environments were never BioWare's forte... likely because the engines they used for their games were not well suited for that. Ironically, what added most character to the city for me were the "Band of Three" notes about the Veil around Kirkwall... and that was just a quick-fix by the writers when they noticed too late that they had kinda forgotten to add sane mages to the cast of characters. It's a bit sad that they're making "exploration focused" games recently - which is just PR speak for "no cities". Oh I prefer Beauclair, to be sure. I wish CDPR would team up with Bioware just to build a proper Minrathous for them
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Little Pumpkin
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition
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XBL Gamertag: Beerfish77
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Post by Beerfish on Aug 3, 2016 21:20:41 GMT
I agree with the op. DA2 had a pretty good story, some very good companions and some good quests. I liked a lot of that game. I am going to replay the darn thing pretty soon.
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Post by Monk on Aug 3, 2016 21:23:23 GMT
I may have come off a bit too negative. Make no mistake, I think the game had a huge potential. I actually very much like the idea of a smaller scale, personal story, where no continent / world / galaxy needs saving. I have no problems with the plot being limited to a single city. But for that to work, the city itself needs to be a character, so to say, the central character even - and Kirkwall was anything but that. Too small, too lacking in detail. Alas. See I thought the smallness and familiar environments actually helped give the city more character, not less. I think the Hanged Man and Blooming Rose did but the rest of the city felt too… segregated. The only unified theme was the hate for Fereldens.
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Post by masterwarderz on Aug 3, 2016 23:49:38 GMT
See I thought the smallness and familiar environments actually helped give the city more character, not less. I think the Hanged Man and Blooming Rose did but the rest of the city felt too… segregated. The only unified theme was the hate for Fereldens. Hate for foreigners is a good unifier tho
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Post by Daemion on Aug 4, 2016 2:30:36 GMT
DA2 wasn't perfect but its numerous flaws didn't stop me from having fun, which is my most important criteria if a game is good or not. It fulfilled its purpose and it seemed to have done so well, since I have a dozen playthroughs.
The first thing I noticed was that the engine was performing significantly better than the one in DA:O. Everything was smoother, with less harddrive activity.
I like the story and the voice acting, especially sarcastic fem!Hawke.
I think the main reason (beyond legitimate issues like using the same assets way too often) was that the game was different from DA:O. People wanted a DA:O2, not DA2. I remember the outrage at playing a fixed character instead of one you created yourself from scratch or that there weren't any other races available. Don't know what their issue was... it worked for Commander Shepard, didn't it?
DA2 was overhyped and because of that it crashed and burned. It's not a bad game though and if you can overlook the worst flaws, it can hold its own against DA:O. It's definitely a lot better than DA:I in my opinion, but that mostly because DA:I is such a mess.
Now imagine if BioWare had had more time to finish the game, how great it would have been...
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Post by Addictress on Aug 4, 2016 4:15:07 GMT
See I thought the smallness and familiar environments actually helped give the city more character, not less. I think the Hanged Man and Blooming Rose did but the rest of the city felt too… segregated. The only unified theme was the hate for Fereldens. Three distinct sections. High-class, low-class, and untouchably low-class. Was in line with the themes of classism/slavery/socio-economic inequality, whether it be elves or humans.
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Post by Nightscrawl on Aug 4, 2016 4:28:44 GMT
I liked DA2 and played it numerous times, but it did have problems. Some of these problems were intentional design decisions that would not have been mitigated by extra development time, like their use of the time jumps. Another issue than many players have with DA2 -- which I do not -- is this feeling that Hawke is a passive, rather than an active character. To these players, Hawke felt weak and powerless as things happened to them over and over that were beyond their power to resolve in any sort of meaningful way. This happens even in the earliest scenes of the game with the sibling death. Right from the very beginning that scene foretells the type of game this will be. There is also the matter of the single human race, which was also an intentional decision. They wanted to tell a more personal story and felt that the single race, and a more defined protagonist was the way to do that. This bothered a great many players, especially after the relative freedom provided by DAO; it seemed to have been taken away with DA2.
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Post by Catilina on Aug 4, 2016 12:01:23 GMT
I like very much. To this day my favorite, but I feel, sadly, just a long dlc. Its no problem for me, but maybe if the publisher to spend more time on it, it could have been the best (okay, I'm probably biased, let there be very good) game. Many potential were remains untapped, unfortunately.
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Post by Monk on Aug 4, 2016 16:06:31 GMT
I think the Hanged Man and Blooming Rose did but the rest of the city felt too… segregated. The only unified theme was the hate for Fereldens. Three distinct sections. High-class, low-class, and untouchably low-class. Was in line with the themes of classism/slavery/socio-economic inequality, whether it be elves or humans. Maybe i'm just not as sensitive to it, having lived in it for so long (the American Thppppt). Figuring i'm not the only one that feels this, it would have helped if they rolled in other characteristics that stood out or maybe set it so everyone felt the oppression.
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Post by Monk on Aug 4, 2016 16:11:22 GMT
I think the Hanged Man and Blooming Rose did but the rest of the city felt too… segregated. The only unified theme was the hate for Fereldens. Hate for foreigners is a good unifier tho I think the problem with it is that quality is universal among species, as it's a survival mechanism. For a "character" to stand out, they should have unique characteristics which'll stickout in people's memories.
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Post by o Ventus on Aug 5, 2016 0:27:47 GMT
Excellent virtue signal there bud. Commissioner Gordon, light the virtue signal!
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∯ Interjector in Chief
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Post by Heimdall on Aug 5, 2016 0:39:32 GMT
First off, hey! nightscrawl's here, I didn't realize you'd found your way to this forum! Yay!
Second, I always wished we could have seen more of Kirkwall actually, locations like the city wall and gate, etc. The repetitive environments bothered me, but I loved the scale of the story in DA2. I liked getting to know a single location over so long, though the passage of time could have been implemented better.
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Post by Reznore on Aug 5, 2016 0:59:45 GMT
First off, hey! nightscrawl's here, I didn't realize you'd found your way to this forum! Yay! Second, I always wished we could have seen more of Kirkwall actually, locations like the city wall and gate, etc. The repetitive environments bothered me, but I loved the scale of the story in DA2. I liked getting to know a single location over so long, though the passage of time could have been implemented better. Yes ,it's too bad Kirkwall was so small . You could see Hightown was supposed to be bigger , you see building on the horizon.And the Hanged Man is the best tavern in Kirkwall, because there is no other tavern in Kirkwall. But I assume since the dev weren't given much time they had to streamlined all the things. I'm curious if Bioware will ever manage to do cities better. So far I don't remember anything impressive.Val Royeaux and even the citadel in ME3 weren't that great.Granted it seems they mostly see their urban areas as quest hub /shopping time and backdrop for cinematics during quests. Not places to explore , and do fun stuff such as bar brawl , play cards , sneakily steal some stuff from rich quarters etc.. But it probably comes with the fact that beyond fighting and cinematics/dialogue , game play isn't very diverse. I actually enjoyed the war table in DAI because it was a new thing to do.
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Post by Nightscrawl on Aug 5, 2016 3:40:16 GMT
Kirkwall did seem smaller than it should have been. One of my favorite concept arts is this one: I would love to have seen that Kirkwall in DA2. If you all will recall, we also didn't get to experience very much of Denerim other than a couple of areas and come back alleys. Orlais was also a disappointment. The DA team has not done large cities very well. In comparison, I thought that the space station thing in ME1 was fantastic, and ENORMOUS, and really seemed like a real city. I'd love to see something like that in a DA game.
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Post by Reznore on Aug 5, 2016 3:46:07 GMT
And also Kirkwall was kind of bowl shaped.It wasn't flat and Hightown was on top of whatever mountain or cliff the city was built on.I think darktown was inside the cliff (sort of) and lowtown and the docks are almost at sea level. It's too bad it's really hard to get a sense of that in game.
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Post by natureguy85 on Aug 5, 2016 5:48:21 GMT
I didn't watch that series, but I'll be sure to avoid it. I really liked Tallis and Mark of the Assassin. I really liked that it expanded on the Qun and the Qunari from a follower that was not the horned giant we associate with those words. It reminds us that it's an ideology more than a race in the Dragon Age world.
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Post by natureguy85 on Aug 5, 2016 5:58:11 GMT
Watch me be controversial. To answer the thread title, no, it wouldn't have. It certainly would've been a much better game. But it wouldn't have been the best anything. The gulf between gameplay and narrative is too great, and cannot be bridged not because of budget, but because of the flawed way BioWare appropriates story telling. The formula they use can work if you ignore the gameplay and focus on the "story" (which is how most people enjoy BioWare games to begin with, KotOR is a fairly good example), but Dragon Age 2 is an exception to that. “Yeah. The themes that were going on in Dragon Age II weren’t about heroism, necessarily. That wasn’t a theme. It was about freedom versus security, which I thought was a good, timely issue. How much freedom do you let people have versus how much security is necessary for people? Like the mages versus templars. That had more application than just that, that struggle between the need to have a secure society versus the struggle for individual freedom.” - David Gaider Even if we put aside BioWare's dishonesty in that Dragon Age 2 was marketed as a Rise To Power, or that this specific theme was already covered in depth in Dragon Age: Origins (Circle of Mages subplot, Dwarven subplot, etc), you could go further than Gaider and say that a central theme of Dragon Age 2 was powerlessness. Or rather, how the unpredictability of chaos renders everyone powerless, regardless of supposed authority. The problem is that at every step, this theme is rebuffed and mocked by the game design and gameplay. Hawke is immensely powerful, and (s)he dispatches dozens of human enemies that come in waves, their bodies disintegrating in fantastical explosions as Hawke backflips, darts and teleports around the battlefield with FF style swords swung effortlessly with one hand. Yet despite that, the game forces the player to stand idly by as a pair of noticeably beatable enemies, confront your sibling alone. The game is filled with these contrived moments of powerlessness that not only denies the player agency, but does so in a way that insults the player's intelligence. The game is almost bipolar between telling the player that they are the most powerful badass ever to exist, and a helpless loser depending on what you're currently doing. Your character is depicted as strong, proactive, intelligent, capable of solving everyone's problems (and finding their dirty underwear to boot). Until story content comes along where you are forced to stand slack jawed and let events that you easily have the power and intelligence to foresee or prevent, happen. The end result is that you don't portray powerlessness as a theme, you portray incompetence. Incompetence of the character, and by proxy, the incompetence of the developers who botched the execution of their writing and design so badly since their intent was not to have Hawke look like a bumbling fool. That unwholesome dissonance between what you're told through story cutscenes and what you do in gameplay is central to why the story of Dragon Age 2 was badly received. That's not even to speak of it's laziness in other areas, just of why it's narrative fails. So in order to avoid that kind of pitfall in future, you stick with ideas that are already known to work. Which is what we saw with Dragon Age: Inquisition and (despite the terrible ending arc caused by a lack of foresight/planning) Mass Effect 3. However, by refusing to treat gameplay and narrative design as two complimentary elements, BioWare has ensured that the types of narratives they will write, and characters they write, will forever be limited in scope. They will never write compelling roleplaying experiences that leverages the best of gameplay, level design, character building ''and'' script now that their competitive advantages are null and voice. That doesn't necessarily mean they make bad games, or that one can't love a BioWare game, but a BioWare game will no longer be universally accepted as exceptional unless they change how they look at designing and writing their games. That was my biggest problem with the game. While Hawke is powerful in combat, yes, Hawke has no power over their own life and instead simply buffeted around by events. That can work for a story, but that doesn't work well for a game where the player is controlling the protagonist. Where's the power and prestige of being rich or champion? You never see it. You also never see the struggles of living in a new place. All of that is covered in the time skips and you get told about it afterwards.
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Post by Reznore on Aug 5, 2016 6:10:55 GMT
I didn't watch that series, but I'll be sure to avoid it. I really liked Tallis and Mark of the Assassin. I really liked that it expanded on the Qun and the Qunari from a follower that was not the horned giant we associate with those words. It reminds us that it's an ideology more than a race in the Dragon Age world. Well you can check it out , I'm sure some people liked it. But yeah I liked MOTA , and I was fine with Tallis ...until I watched the show and developped an irrational "urgh" toward Felicia Day. Anyway the Qun was one of my favorite part of DA2 , and it was nice to explore what it meant for elves , and the fact that Tallis struggled with it but still tried to defend it because the Qun offered shelter and a good position in their society. Something she wouldn't have found anywhere else. It was the same with Gatt in DAI , also an elf who was a slave in Tevinter and he was saved by Qunari.I know a lot of people don't approve of the Qunari but I do not think they are the evil empire of doom.They have good things and bad things.
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Post by linksocarina on Aug 6, 2016 3:32:49 GMT
All I know is if they do a directors cut of Dragon Age II I would bet it would be a much better game.
As it stands...it's still my favorite story out of the three games in the series, which is saying something really. And I think it lived up to some of it's potential in the end because it's the only game out of the series so far to really make me think in a social and philosophical sense without hitting you over the head with it.
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Post by vertigomez on Aug 7, 2016 13:49:04 GMT
Watch me be controversial. To answer the thread title, no, it wouldn't have. It certainly would've been a much better game. But it wouldn't have been the best anything. The gulf between gameplay and narrative is too great, and cannot be bridged not because of budget, but because of the flawed way BioWare appropriates story telling. The formula they use can work if you ignore the gameplay and focus on the "story" (which is how most people enjoy BioWare games to begin with, KotOR is a fairly good example), but Dragon Age 2 is an exception to that. “Yeah. The themes that were going on in Dragon Age II weren’t about heroism, necessarily. That wasn’t a theme. It was about freedom versus security, which I thought was a good, timely issue. How much freedom do you let people have versus how much security is necessary for people? Like the mages versus templars. That had more application than just that, that struggle between the need to have a secure society versus the struggle for individual freedom.” - David Gaider Even if we put aside BioWare's dishonesty in that Dragon Age 2 was marketed as a Rise To Power, or that this specific theme was already covered in depth in Dragon Age: Origins (Circle of Mages subplot, Dwarven subplot, etc), you could go further than Gaider and say that a central theme of Dragon Age 2 was powerlessness. Or rather, how the unpredictability of chaos renders everyone powerless, regardless of supposed authority. The problem is that at every step, this theme is rebuffed and mocked by the game design and gameplay. Hawke is immensely powerful, and (s)he dispatches dozens of human enemies that come in waves, their bodies disintegrating in fantastical explosions as Hawke backflips, darts and teleports around the battlefield with FF style swords swung effortlessly with one hand. Yet despite that, the game forces the player to stand idly by as a pair of noticeably beatable enemies, confront your sibling alone. The game is filled with these contrived moments of powerlessness that not only denies the player agency, but does so in a way that insults the player's intelligence. The game is almost bipolar between telling the player that they are the most powerful badass ever to exist, and a helpless loser depending on what you're currently doing. Your character is depicted as strong, proactive, intelligent, capable of solving everyone's problems (and finding their dirty underwear to boot). Until story content comes along where you are forced to stand slack jawed and let events that you easily have the power and intelligence to foresee or prevent, happen. The end result is that you don't portray powerlessness as a theme, you portray incompetence. Incompetence of the character, and by proxy, the incompetence of the developers who botched the execution of their writing and design so badly since their intent was not to have Hawke look like a bumbling fool. That unwholesome dissonance between what you're told through story cutscenes and what you do in gameplay is central to why the story of Dragon Age 2 was badly received. That's not even to speak of it's laziness in other areas, just of why it's narrative fails. So in order to avoid that kind of pitfall in future, you stick with ideas that are already known to work. Which is what we saw with Dragon Age: Inquisition and (despite the terrible ending arc caused by a lack of foresight/planning) Mass Effect 3. However, by refusing to treat gameplay and narrative design as two complimentary elements, BioWare has ensured that the types of narratives they will write, and characters they write, will forever be limited in scope. They will never write compelling roleplaying experiences that leverages the best of gameplay, level design, character building ''and'' script now that their competitive advantages are null and voice. That doesn't necessarily mean they make bad games, or that one can't love a BioWare game, but a BioWare game will no longer be universally accepted as exceptional unless they change how they look at designing and writing their games. That was my biggest problem with the game. While Hawke is powerful in combat, yes, Hawke has no power over their own life and instead simply buffeted around by events. That can work for a story, but that doesn't work well for a game where the player is controlling the protagonist. Where's the power and prestige of being rich or champion? You never see it. You also never see the struggles of living in a new place. All of that is covered in the time skips and you get told about it afterwards. I think that's very much up to individual taste. I liked the sense of hopelessness - despite being charismatic and strong, Hawke's just a person. I like the reminder that my PC can't walk in, whack everybody in the face, and tell them what to do. (Probably why I liked Trespasser so much.) And I disagree about not feeling the struggle of living in a new place, or feeling powerful/rich. I thought the Hawke family's situation in Lowtown was drilled in pretty well - people are always calling you a dirty dog lord refugee, your sibling and mother are miserable, Gamlen's house is falling apart, your hangout is a notoriously seedy pub... and by the time you're Champion, people are constantly kowtowing to you and asking for your help/advice.
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Always teacher, sometimes writer
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PSN: LinksOcarina
Posts: 3,179 Likes: 4,063
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Post by linksocarina on Aug 7, 2016 15:10:46 GMT
Something to add about the city-scape, but as a guy who has lived in New York almost all my life, they did capture that element correctly too. You kind of do go to familiar haunts after a while, it becomes routine, and the meet and greet with friends and acquaintances now and again is all a part of it, while the city slowly changes over time or deals with issues or crisis in the in-between.
I know people had an issue with the reused environments, but I got to say I quite liked that aspect because it gave the city character, and made sense for Hawke to build his life around a new homeland instead of going and seeing the world.
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Post by natureguy85 on Aug 7, 2016 15:23:12 GMT
I think that's very much up to individual taste. I liked the sense of hopelessness - despite being charismatic and strong, Hawke's just a person. I like the reminder that my PC can't walk in, whack everybody in the face, and tell them what to do. (Probably why I liked Trespasser so much.) And I disagree about not feeling the struggle of living in a new place, or feeling powerful/rich. I thought the Hawke family's situation in Lowtown was drilled in pretty well - people are always calling you a dirty dog lord refugee, your sibling and mother are miserable, Gamlen's house is falling apart, your hangout is a notoriously seedy pub... and by the time you're Champion, people are constantly kowtowing to you and asking for your help/advice. I never saw Hawke as charismatic or strong. He's a busybody shoving his nose into everything. I did like all the slurs against them as Fereldens, particularly the guy from the Bone Pit insulting Fereldens and then remembering that Hawke is one. However, I didn't get much from Gamlen's little hut. Sure, it looked crappy, but where was the struggle to get by? I did like the argument of Gamlen asking the Hawke's to pay rent, but the problem was that they made so much of Gamlen being a greedy asshole that it seemed more like that than him seriously trying to support 4 people. Which is too bad because Gamlen had some great sympathetic notes. There's obviously the arc with his daughter, but my favorite is when he complains that he felt like his parents loved Leandra more despite her being gone and him being the one who was there taking care of them in their old age. As for the family, the sibling is gone before you get into the estate and Leandra dies before long. Then all you're left with is an empty house. I wish they'd made more of that. Maybe they did and I just forgot. Then the estate looks nice, but where's the elevation in social status? Hawke becomes errand boy for the Viscount because the Arishok found him interesting, but then the Viscount dies. Oh, there goes all our political capital. Then you skip over the Champion honeymoon period. The only thing you get is both Orsino and Meredith wanting your support because supposedly the people will find that compelling.
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Monk
N4
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Post by Monk on Aug 7, 2016 15:59:33 GMT
I think that's very much up to individual taste. I liked the sense of hopelessness - despite being charismatic and strong, Hawke's just a person. I like the reminder that my PC can't walk in, whack everybody in the face, and tell them what to do. (Probably why I liked Trespasser so much.) And I disagree about not feeling the struggle of living in a new place, or feeling powerful/rich. I thought the Hawke family's situation in Lowtown was drilled in pretty well - people are always calling you a dirty dog lord refugee, your sibling and mother are miserable, Gamlen's house is falling apart, your hangout is a notoriously seedy pub... and by the time you're Champion, people are constantly kowtowing to you and asking for your help/advice. I never saw Hawke as charismatic or strong. He's a busybody shoving his nose into everything. I did like all the slurs against them as Fereldens, particularly the guy from the Bone Pit insulting Fereldens and then remembering that Hawke is one. However, I didn't get much from Gamlen's little hut. Sure, it looked crappy, but where was the struggle to get by? I did like the argument of Gamlen asking the Hawke's to pay rent, but the problem was that they made so much of Gamlen being a greedy asshole that it seemed more like that than him seriously trying to support 4 people. Which is too bad because Gamlen had some great sympathetic notes. There's obviously the arc with his daughter, but my favorite is when he complains that he felt like his parents loved Leandra more despite her being gone and him being the one who was there taking care of them in their old age. As for the family, the sibling is gone before you get into the estate and Leandra dies before long. Then all you're left with is an empty house. I wish they'd made more of that. Maybe they did and I just forgot. Then the estate looks nice, but where's the elevation in social status? Hawke becomes errand boy for the Viscount because the Arishok found him interesting, but then the Viscount dies. Oh, there goes all our political capital. Then you skip over the Champion honeymoon period. The only thing you get is both Orsino and Meredith wanting your support because supposedly the people will find that compelling. Yeah but i think this is when you consider how little time they had to deliver the goods. There's a lot they could have done to get those points across, if they had the time. Because honestly, and i doubt the DA team would disagree much with this, there could have been more voice work, moodier lighting and coloring. Take the third act with the Champion title you were referencing. There should have been more voice-work for whispers and revering the PC as they walked by, especially in the Viscount's Keep and passing by guards. The coloring could have been brighter in the Keep and Hawke's Estate. The Estate also could have had more gifts bestowed upon it for the sake of getting on the Champion's good side. Lighting, in general, should have been brighter in these areas. A lot of this they probably had the budgets for but no time to think over what they done. Just produce, produce, produce. Time should have been a luxury thanks to the success of DAO.
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Julilla
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Post by Julilla on Aug 7, 2016 19:16:15 GMT
IMO, you need to accept that Hawke's life is a shitshow to enjoy this story. I do enjoy it, because I'm ok with that and with playing that out in the game. It's definitely a hurdle for a lot of players, though. It was an interesting way to tell a story, I think they don't get enough props for that.
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