Poll of the Day > Dragon Age might be the saddest story of the 2010's

(+) Yeah! (+)

One great game, followed by two awful sequels and now it's dead in the water after DA4 was cancelled.

Imagine if after the first game, they actually continued to make games for old school RPG fans and not social media awards.

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It hasn't been cancelled though.
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I thought people generally liked DA:I.

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Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. It's like EA/Bioware said "DA:O is an awesome game. Now let's make something completely different!" I'm still completely baffled.

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Bioware is more the saddest story of the 2010's

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All 3 games were of the same quality. Okay.

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Krow_Incarnate posted...

One great game, followed by two awful sequels and now it's dead in the water after DA4 was cancelled.

Imagine if after the first game, they actually continued to make games for old school RPG fans and not social media awards.

The worst part is you can pinpoint the exact moment Bioware fell apart in DA:II.

End of act 1 in the deep roads the writing and everything takes a massive and noticeable drop. Act II feels like it had the notes and scraps, but come act III it's at 'normal' Bioware writing levels.

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EvilMegas posted...

All 3 games were of the same quality. Okay.

lol okay
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I played origins after the second game. The first game felt slow and dull, gameplay wise. Story was better though.


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Inquisition felt like the most fun in the first half, then it kinda trailed off.

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I don't know how anyone can play Inquisition. The combat is dreadful. Very boring game.

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origins is one of the best games of all time imo

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WarGreymon77 posted...

Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. It's like EA/Bioware said "DA:O is an awesome game. Now let's make something completely different!" I'm still completely baffled.

The most baffling of all is that DAO was MADE to feel old school and as a call back to the BG/IWD days, it's like they completely forgot that was the point of the game when making the sequels.

At least Baldur's Gate III is looking sweet as hell.

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I respectfully disagree. If any game is the saddest story of the 2010s its hands down Mass Effect.

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I didn't care for the first game tbh.

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I actually didn't hate DA2, except for the obvious rushed nature of the game with it's piss poor story, characters and the fact they only had about 3 environments copy and pasted dozens of times each the gameplay itself wasn't that much worse than DAO. EA should be the one to blame almost entirely for rushing them to completle it in a year.

Inquisition sucked ass all the way through though, so many forced mechanics poorly implemented in an attempt to be the next Skyrim in was painful, complete with shitty limited combat, more uninteresting companions and lacking a soul.

Also I hated how after DAO they just said "Lets just make Mass Effect but Fantasy"

Lokarin posted...

Bioware is more the saddest story of the 2010's

yes

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Cruddy_horse posted...

I actually didn't hate DA2, except for the obvious rushed nature of the game with it's piss poor story, characters and the fact they only had about 3 environments copy and pasted dozens of times each the gameplay itself wasn't that much worse than DAO. EA should be the one to blame almost entirely for rushing them to completle it in a year.

Inquisition sucked ass all the way through though, so many forced mechanics poorly implemented in an attempt to be the next Skyrim in was painful, complete with shitty limited combat, more uninteresting companions and lacking a soul.

Also I hated how after DAO they just said "Lets just make Mass Effect but Fantasy"

Inquisition just had so many mis-steps. Like, I think part of the issue was that they didn't like it when everyone had a mage along JUST for healing in 1/2. However their solution was to basically make it so no one healed and just had shields/barriers/whatever instead. This had the exact opposite of the intended effect because now you HAD to bring along a barrier-maker since there was no way to heal aside from the limited potion amount and if you were a class which could reliably regenerate their barriers you became stupidly infinitely more useful simply because you wouldn't tap into the limited potion pool as much. Meanwhile if you couldn't put up armor/barriers you were near useless since you'd die or drain potions.

As for characters the issue was that, while there were some that were memorable, so much of it was just lack-luster and uninteresting. II was bad but the characters had at least some charm for the most part. However in DA:I aside from Cassandra and Varric I feel like the characters were just... either empty or diversity hires. Not to mention it was full of decisions that were just utterly baffling. Like, for example, not allowing Leliana to be romanced if she was single. That came off as a huge headscratcher. Or like the mage leader in DA:I, she's Alistar's mother. But she isn't just easily missable (side with the templars) but even if you do go with her it's very easy to just not find out. This is a character who should matter a LOT more to the plot and world yet she's both optional and shoved to the side. Who do we get instead? A homosexual from Tevinter. I'm not knocking Dorian as a character. I'm questioning why they made him playable but Alistar's mom entirely optional and unimportant. In my eyes it seems to come down to 'they wanted a diversity character' more often than not.

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Even Varric was a hollow shell of his former self. I guess the ending of DA2 had an effect on him.

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WarGreymon77 posted...

Even Varric was a hollow shell of his former self. I guess the ending of DA2 had an effect on him.

He's still the sexiest character in the game though. Shame he can't be romanced by either gender.

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EvilMegas posted...

All 3 games were of the same quality. Okay.

o.0 DAO was a great game.
DA2 was a cheap dynasty warriors knock off.
DAI was ok. I had fun with it, had some good moments for sure, but it was lacking. I hated most of the characters, only liking Cassandra and Varric. Iron Bull was ok, but I don't recall ever using him in my party.

BlackScythe0 posted...

o.0 DAO was a great game.
DA2 was a cheap dynasty warriors knock off.
DAI was ok. I had fun with it, had some good moments for sure, but it was lacking. I hated most of the characters, only liking Cassandra and Varric. Iron Bull was ok, but I don't recall ever using him in my party.

DA:O was like a classic movie. It might have flaws but it's good qualities, memorable characters, and the like make people still watch it years later.

DA:2 was the straight to DvD sequel where it still has a bit of charm but an overriding lack of effort, cheapness, and apathy ruined any chance it had of being great.

DA:I was the cruddy net reboot that has little to do with the original beyond cosmetic appeal and was a blatant cashgrab based on nostalgia otherwise.

I think what bugs me the most about DA:I is the fact that it would have been so easy to actually make a legit entry or to improve it by a lot through simple decisions that got ignored for some unfathomable reason. Like, here's a REALLY simple one, have the castle upgrades actually matter. It felt like they were entirely cosmetic and they never fixed some glaring holes for no descernable reason.

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I remember the Bioware folks claiming that DA:I would take inspiration from both previous games (this was before release), but I struggle to see any DA:O influence at all.

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WarGreymon77 posted...

I remember the Bioware folks claiming that DA:I would take inspiration from both previous games (this was before release), but I struggle to see any DA:O influence at all.

It's there... but it's entirely superficial (see: Fiona). I suspect that, between this and ME:A, EA saw how successful titles like Elder Scrolls, Far Cry, and Assassin's Creed could be and thought the solution was to make all their games sandbox without bothering to actually look into why people liked their games. I know ME:A's making was a lot more complicated due to a multitude of factors (such as being forced to use Frostbite) but it almost feels like that. That the game was dictated entirely by corporate and saddled with lazy writers which robbed it of any chance to be good. You can even see this in ME3 with things like the military score and terribly thought-out decisions.

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PKMNsony posted...

The most baffling of all is that DAO was MADE to feel old school and as a call back to the BG/IWD days, it's like they completely forgot that was the point of the game when making the sequels.

the combat was sooo much better in 2, especially for mages.

even the auto-attack was fun to use
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Lokarin posted...

Bioware is more the saddest story of the 2010's

Perhaps. Went from a respected RPG company of the late 90s through the 00s to a decline around 2011 with Dragon Age II
and ME3 to a train wreck later in the decade. But that's what happens when all your talent jumps ship.

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Krazy_Kirby posted...

the combat was sooo much better in 2, especially for mages.

even the auto-attack was fun to use

Button mashing was so much better than tactical combat?

Unbridled9 posted...

Inquisition just had so many mis-steps. Like, I think part of the issue was that they didn't like it when everyone had a mage along JUST for healing in 1/2. However their solution was to basically make it so no one healed and just had shields/barriers/whatever instead. This had the exact opposite of the intended effect because now you HAD to bring along a barrier-maker since there was no way to heal aside from the limited potion amount and if you were a class which could reliably regenerate their barriers you became stupidly infinitely more useful simply because you wouldn't tap into the limited potion pool as much. Meanwhile if you couldn't put up armor/barriers you were near useless since you'd die or drain potions.

As for characters the issue was that, while there were some that were memorable, so much of it was just lack-luster and uninteresting. II was bad but the characters had at least some charm for the most part. However in DA:I aside from Cassandra and Varric I feel like the characters were just... either empty or diversity hires. Not to mention it was full of decisions that were just utterly baffling. Like, for example, not allowing Leliana to be romanced if she was single. That came off as a huge headscratcher. Or like the mage leader in DA:I, she's Alistar's mother. But she isn't just easily missable (side with the templars) but even if you do go with her it's very easy to just not find out. This is a character who should matter a LOT more to the plot and world yet she's both optional and shoved to the side. Who do we get instead? A homosexual from Tevinter. I'm not knocking Dorian as a character. I'm questioning why they made him playable but Alistar's mom entirely optional and unimportant. In my eyes it seems to come down to 'they wanted a diversity character' more often than not.

yeah the Armor/Barrier was dumb, especially that Warriors get a really Op skill that lets the ENTIRE PARTY gain Armor for dealing damage, making everybody unkillable.

Yeah the characters were awful, I really hated how Leliana possibly dying in origins was completely retconned even if she got her head cut off it goes agaisn't what Bioware claims thier games are about, but then again we all saw how much it didn't matter with ME3.

EvilMegas posted...

All 3 games were of the same quality. Okay.

I think the biggest issue is you dont see a notable progression in quality or evolution of the gameplay from one installment to the next. Every new Dragon Age introduces it's own issues while not really improving on the previous game, so it feels like a downhill trek even if there's not necessarily a big drop off in quality.

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Cruddy_horse posted...

yeah the Armor/Barrier was dumb, especially that Warriors get a really Op skill that lets the ENTIRE PARTY gain Armor for dealing damage, making everybody unkillable.

Yeah the characters were awful, I really hated how Leliana possibly dying in origins was completely retconned even if she got her head cut off it goes agaisn't what Bioware claims thier games are about, but then again we all saw how much it didn't matter with ME3.

Well I do KIND of get why they retconned it and I don't think the blame for that decision should be on DA:I so much as it should be on DA:O especially considering how dumb you'd have to be to take it. Like, it's not even 'dark side' it's 'idiot side'. However I do agree with how terribly they represented the player choices in prior games with the only one that, IMO, I feel got properly respected was Hawke. It almost feels like the devs only played 2.

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inquisition was garbage

they tried to do what they did with the mass effect series, in dragon age, but failed miserably, because they didn't seem to get what made everyone like origins.

in mass effect,they made it smoother, and cut out the bloat with 2, and then just refined that with 3.

in dragon age, they just completely threw everything out of the window with 2, and then with inquisition they went "okay why did people like origins?" and then did the opposite.

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Unbridled9 posted...

I suspect that, between this and ME:A, EA saw how successful titles like Elder Scrolls, Far Cry, and Assassin's Creed could be and thought the solution was to make all their games sandbox without bothering to actually look into why people liked their games.

This is one of the biggest issues with the AAA industry in general. You get executives that have never touched a video game in their lives saying "X is making somebody else a whole lot of money right now, make our game more like X so we can have a piece of that pie," putting no effort into understanding why X is popular or why the things that make X popular might not work for their game.

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Bulbasaur posted...

inquisition was garbage

they tried to do what they did with the mass effect series, in dragon age, but failed miserably, because they didn't seem to get what made everyone like origins.

in mass effect,they made it smoother, and cut out the bloat with 2, and then just refined that with 3.

in dragon age, they just completely threw everything out of the window with 2, and then with inquisition they went "okay why did people like origins?" and then did the opposite.

Exactly.

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if anything im glad were all collectively realizing none of these games were ever that good

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adjl posted...

This is one of the biggest issues with the AAA industry in general. You get executives that have never touched a video game in their lives saying "X is making somebody else a whole lot of money right now, make our game more like X so we can have a piece of that pie," putting no effort into understanding why X is popular or why the things that make X popular might not work for their game.

while i don't think you're wrong, i also don't think ea had much to do about inquisition

we've learned an awful lot about bioware these past few months, and they're not real great.

i can't really say about andromeda. on one hand it's not really as terrible a game as everyone screamed, but at the same time i don't think it should be called mass effect

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Bulbasaur posted...

while i don't think you're wrong, i also don't think ea had much to do about inquisition

we've learned an awful lot about bioware these past few months, and they're not real great.

i can't really say about andromeda. on one hand it's not really as terrible a game as everyone screamed, but at the same time i don't think it should be called mass effect

Well, the issue is that Bioware now and Bioware of the past are two different companies. ME2 was the last made by the 'real' Bioware and everything since then has been the 'new' Bioware. And yes, EA has a lot to do with DA:I. Why do you think it had that multiplayer mode? ME:A was effectively 'Mass Effect: Executive Decision' and Anthem is just the culmination of this.

Executives should not make design decisions for video games. It's a terrible idea. Especially if their decisions are based not on contact and dialogue with their fanbase but graphs and twitter users.

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Wasn't crazy about the gameplay/style of DA:I, but I will give it credit for having a good, focused story. In some ways it was able to surpass Origins, Elder Scrolls games, and yes even Witcher 3 in that aspect (even if W3 easily had better writing and characters).

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Justin2Krelian posted...

Wasn't crazy about the gameplay/style of DA:I, but I will give it credit for having a good, focused story. In some ways it was able to surpass Origins, Elder Scrolls games, and yes even Witcher 3 in that aspect (even if W3 easily had better writing and characters).

Ummm... I really have to disagree strongly here as I felt it was a complete mess that was largely meandering about with little, if any, actual focus. The world felt shallow and uninteresting in my eyes with a bunch of filler quests with no substance and flat characters with cliche'd and obvious plots. The only character really worth mentioning was Morrigan and that's because she actually grew and changed a bit from her time in DA:O.

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Top ten saddest anime deaths

Krow_Incarnate posted...

Two great games, one okay middle game and now DA4 is in development hell, ok?

fixed that for you, ok?

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