Dragon Age: Inquisition (Plot Details in Spoilers!)

All you need to do to rebut the official reviews is post this



IGN are awful at reviews, I much prefer Eurogamer for my reviews personally.

And Eurogamer is a really good example of how the official reviews right after the game came out differ drastically from what review sites say about the game now.

Here's a glimmer

The original Dragon Age 2 review on Eurogamer gave it an 8/10 claiming that

For those who stick around, able to forgive the moments when the game spins its wheels, there's a substantial and muscular experience to be had.

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Yet, a year later, the site had this to say about the game

I don't understand the excitement that grasped the gaming press a year ago. In my most gentlemanly manner, I respectfully disagree with Dan's review of the game and, frankly, I'm baffled by the positive critical reaction that the game received. Dragon Age 2 had some great moments and it certainly had a lot going for it, but that didn't stop it being a ragged, stumbling and sometimes very flawed experience.

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Paid, or just stupid? I don't know and I don't care. The fact is that the COMMUNITY RESPONSE is a far better barometer of whether a game is good or not, and the community response for this title was overwhelmingly negative.

Now Khalid, do I or do I not have a right to my own opinions? Yes or no? Because I can't be crying when all I've been doing is defending my opinion on the game this entire time from people essentially claiming I have no right to feel that

1. Bioware has lost focus on the core gameplay in favor of pandering bullshit to broad gamer demographics as determined by EA's focus testing groups
2. Dragon Age 2 abandoned so much of what was good in Dragon Age Origins that it wasn't even in the same genre anymore, and was basically a stab in the back to Bioware's long time fans
3. That I refuse to play it or consider it a good title because of the dichotomy between what was promised when the intellectual property was introduced and sold to us versus what direction Bioware was taking the series in after the fact.

Do I or do I not have a right to this opinion? Yes or no?

Sean_sl said:

hodj, just let it go bro. You made your point, people get it. You hammered it firmly in there. At this point people very firmly understand your feelings. They may not agree with you, but they get it.

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I would have happily let it go earlier but everyone had to get in my face about my comment about the romance shit, insulting me and attacking me as if I don't have a right to my own point of view on this.

khalid_sl said:

Also, when you were asked to point out stuff that you didn't like about the game, the only thing you mentioned in specifics (at least at first) was something flat out wrong (that your characters would never stay where you told them to). So that didn't help your case.

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No, I listed three or four things that I felt were wrong from my initial impressions of the game. Then you all jumped on that one thing that may or may not be correct (I only played the game for the tutorial so EXCUSE ME for having one out of three or four things wrong in a list of initial impressions) which then led to you all going half cocked and ended in everyone trying to gang bang me and insult me and mock me for having an opinion that is well sourced and perfectly valid, in fact entirely within the mainstream of the gaming community.

In fact I'm gonna go get the post and prove it.

Here's my series of complaints leading up to that post that you all went half cocked over

hodj_sl said:

I'm sorry its been a really long time but I don't recall anally raping any of my baldur's gate 2 compatriots. Maybe that's just me.

Anyway, if you don't think that's what the broad community was complaining about (a focus on relationships over delivering a quality game) why was Hepler's statements about not even enjoying playing games so focused on in the backlash against her? She was quoted as saying stuff like

It came to exemplify what people felt was going wrong with Bioware, a focus on pandering to the relationships and female demographics over delivering solid gameplay to the core gamer set who have been lost in the wilderness since the early 2000s hoping for someone to take up the banner of making quality strategy style RPGs.

But here, you tell me, would press button receive awesome not be a good example of focusing on style over substance?

Because that was a direct quote from a developer of Dragon Age 2 prior to its release. The "button/awesome" connection.

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hodj_sl said:

He's talking about turning the gameplay into pressing basically one button over and over. Like what we're getting in Ryse apparently. A bunch of QTEs without any penalties that can be beaten without even pressing the button.

This is what people are riled up about. Its almost more a rebellion against the entire trend of the industry to dumb down and pander to every segment and every demographic and focus on everything but the one thing that matters: Making a good game.

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hodj_sl said:

Because to get to a gameplay point where one button spamming is possible, they had to strip out the tactical elements, limit the camera to about 3 feet behind your back and make combat something where you can spam attacks in general, rather than having to think about where you're standing, how you're casting your spells, how the dragon is facing. DA:O had MMO style gameplay with the holy trinity where positioning actually almost kinda mattered.

That shit was ripped out completely.

Turning it into basically an action RPG on its face removes much of the tactical depth of the gameplay.

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hodj_sl said:

The issue isn't romances, the issue is focusing on the romances instead of making sure the game doesn't suck. Which they failed to do in the case of DA2, ME3 and SWTOR. Romances in Baldur's Gate were a tiny fraction of the game, only developed in the second title and never meant to be anything but kind of hoaky and silly. There was not full on sex scenes, yes animating that shit does take time away from making...you know...the actual game not suck, its a waste of animation time, its a distraction from the purpose of the game, which is to be a good game, not a shitty day time television show. There is a massive difference between romance in BG 2 and modern Bioware romance heavy melodramas with some occassional gameplay in between. Sex does not sell video games to me. It sells porn to me, except I don't buy porn because that's just retarded. Sex is not something that sells me on a game. Its a net negative to me if its larger than a tiny fraction of the game. When it is the core of your marketing campaign along with PRESS BUTTON RECEIVE AWESOME, we have a problem.

No one expected DA:O to live up to Baldur's Gate. What we expected was that DA2 would improve on the attempt to live up to Baldur's Gate by DA:O, which we were not given.

Right, and DA2 was the knife in the back after they drew me in and distracted me with shiny things.

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hodj_sl said:

We are just gonna have to agree to disagree right here bro. It is not. Not even close. It is not. You cannot go into an isometric view, your characters will not remain in positions you put them in, every single thing about it is inferior in every single way. In my opinion. It is shit.

And there is no fucking way I will ever. EVER. play that game again. Or any of its sequels. Or anything from Bioware. Its just the way its gonna be. You will not change my mind on this. I would rather cut off my arms and never play video games again.

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I'm talking about all these issues I had with the overall game and direction at bioware, the romance, the combat, and you all picked out one fucking error and then tried to play it up like that one thing I got wrong was something that made everything else I was saying worthless. But it doesn't. Whether you can technically move your characters around or not, my point was that you could not control them as precisely in DA2 as you could in terms of placement, in terms of strategic gameplay, as you can in Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age Origins.

But let's just completely fucking ignore the greater point to harp about some minor technicality because I don't know why. You guys can't handle someone saying Bioware is a shitty game developer now or something I guess.

Tuco_sl said:

hodj you have a right to a point of view. You just don't have a right to tell us about it over and over in as many words as your keyboard can output.

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Burden shifting. I made a few posts, and was being insulted and engaged so why am I the one to blame here exactly? What did I say or do to deserve you personally insulting me? Go back and reread the fucking thread, thanks.

Here let me help you

My first post

hodj_sl said:

It was good enough to play through like 3 times, but still not up to Baldur's Gate and Planescape.

Then they decided to pander to the hamburgler hepler crowd and that was the end of that dream.

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To which someone ASKED ME this

Mixtilplix_sl said:

Can you elaborate on what Bioware did to cater to the " hamburgler hepler" crowd that was different from Baldur's Gate etc? I am really curious as I could never get past the terrible isometric style graphics of those types of games, Diablo included. I just thought it was so antiquated, even back then.

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To which I responded

hodj_sl said:

They pushed romance bullshit over core gameplay experience. It led to probably an overreaction but a warranted one.

Like even their advertising and stuff started focusing on how you could bang all your friends in your party and blah. Then we get a game like DA2. Some people here may have liked some aspects of it, some may have even enjoyed it, but in terms of what was promised before DA:O about how they were giving the hard core RPG crowd a return to baldur's gate, and how DA:O was good, but just needed more polish, more in depth implementation of the mechanics, they just threw that all in the toilet for the sequel.

You couldn't write a better recipe for a shit load of pissed off neckbeards bro.

This fat chick that worked as a writer there was featured in some video and became like the face of everything going wrong at Bioware. The internet ripped her to pieces.

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Khalid then came and asked this

khalid_sl said:

Hodj, are you agreeing with the neckbeards or mocking them? I really hope mocking them, because saying shit like how interparty romance took away from good gameplay is just not true. You must know that totally different teams work on that shit. Do you really think the team working on balancing the talent trees and implementing the combat of DA:2 was the same team making sure you could romance Anders?

The neckbeard freakout that Anders would hit on you was pretty hilarious and a sign of how utterly immature the gaming audience can be. OMG a gay character in a game asked me out, squick!

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To which I responded

hodj_sl said:

I did not played DA2 long enough to get to the romance shit. I literally hated that game the second I turned it on, by the end of the tutorial I was done. Everything about it is cancer to me. That combat system immediately turned me off. It was 100% console controls and gameplay and not a single nod towards the PC crowd who bought the shit out of Dragon Age Origins and loved it. I wanted to nuke EA head offices from orbit. I began praying Osama bin Laden would declare Jihad on them and someone would fly a plane into the bioware head offices.

I'm over it now for the most part but that was my single least favorite game ever. Period. I played DA:O through 3 or 4 times. I maxed out that melee wizard class and was soloing the dragons and shit. I loved that game even though it was relatively mediocre compared to its forebears. But to see them just....completely abandon us, the core fans of that series. Just completely abandon us. Yeah that shit made me pretty goddamn angsty at the time bro. I was like cutting myself and shit (not really).


But it seems to me the primary point of the neckbeards who hounded Jennifer Hepler from her job there was that she exemplified Bioware's failure to focus on quality gameplay and narrative over bullshit relationship shit.

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And that's when shit started going downhill. I WAS ASKED what I meant when I said they went all hamburgler hepler and I responded that the community felt that Bioware was focus too much on romance and none core gameplay, to the detriment of the game.

Since then I've been repeatedly personally attacked over and over for that statement. So what's up? Stop trying to blame me for responding to being personally attacked. I'll take that apology now.

khalid_sl said:

This is your post that I was talking about. You said lack of isometric view and then characters not remaining in position. So out of the two concrete things you mentioned, one is true but not necessarily an indication of a bad game (pretty much no games give you an isometric view anymore) and one blatantly untrue.

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right you took two points from one post, while ignoring the multiple other points I"d been making, and now you're still doing it. As if taking that one post out and putting it in a vacuum is doing anything but proving my point that you are cherry picking ONE FUCKING DETAIL I got "Wrong" because I didn't play the game past the tutorial and was trying to express my frustration at the lack of tactical depth and have been trying to blow that up into well I just don't know what I'm talking about. Oh and if I defend myself, then I get to be called a bunch of childish retarded names by Tuco and blamed for....responding to people asking me to elaborate on my opinion, then attacking me for doing so.

Fuck that shit.

khalid_sl said:

As I said though, obviously you are fine with stating your opinion. However, lets say you created a thread on the joys of anthropology. I hopped in and went off on a rant about how much I hated anthropology and how you all were abunch of dirty graverobbers. Whatever, I'm fine for my own opinion. However, if I kept at it so much that none of you could actually talk about anthropology or the joys of discovery, wouldn't you be a bit peeved?

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This isn't even remotely what happened. I made a single fucking post, was asked to elaborate on it, did so, then spent the past day and a half being personally attacked for my opinions.

Someone point me to the post I made that makes me the bad guy here. Did I call you all bads? Hmm? Did I say you need carried and can't play single player games? Did I make stupid mocking posts about your ability to play video games while simultaneously asking you to elaborate on your opinions so I could then attack you for them? Hmmm?

Eat every inch of my balls please. Thanks.