Dragon Age: Inquisition (Plot Details in Spoilers!)

If you couldn't stand DAO before there's not much reason to expect a different outcome now. Unless you've gotten older, maybe---sounds silly but this actually happened with my nephew (he watched me beat it over the summer when he was 15 and couldn't stand it, he got back from college last month and was a serious fanboi).

More likely you played as one of the elven origins--all of which kinda sucked. If you want the best DA narrative roll a dwarven commoner. Fantasy racism is awesome.

khorum_sl said:

If you couldn't stand DAO before there's not much reason to expect a different outcome now. Unless you've gotten older, maybe---sounds silly but this actually happened with my nephew (he watched me beat it over the summer when he was 15 and couldn't stand it, he got back from college last month and was a serious fanboi).

More likely you played as one of the elven origins--all of which kinda sucked. If you want the best DA narrative roll a dwarven commoner. Fantasy racism is awesome.

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I liked DA:O i just dropped it for a different game back then, DA2 was ass though lol

Yea I quit playing MP before platinum released. Think I did one match just to see it on my engineer and blasted shit to bits cuz carnifex is still win.

As for DA:O and Divinity, I don't really know how uh, I guess, convince you, or not. Divinity/Baldur's etc are really just my cup of tea; I played them when I was very young - IE Khorum said his nephew couldn't stand it when he was younger but liked it a lot now that he's older.

It PROBABLY has a lot to do with what you expect of a game and what you grew up with. I grew up with my uncles who played video games, read comic books, D&D and whatnot, so when we started doing SC, BG, Icewind Dale etc, it just fit for me. I knew it, I could understand it, and it was fantastic storytelling. Admittedly, I think that style of storytelling it sort of...different than most people expect, especially say, someone who started with something like Halo. (Granted I liken Halo to Quake MP back in the day but I digress.)

With the addition of some real time mechanics, you can probably get a lot more people into these games.

They're all worth playing if you want to see a story play out with nods to choices you yourself made. DA:O is fantastic if you liked Baldur's Gate; it's not the same but you can see the nods it gives to it. The way the music starts/stops, the sound the items make in your inventory etc. All the same.

DA2 is...well I still liked DA2, but as I've said in the past, since RPGs are sort of my thing, I have played some fantastically shitty ones, and still probably come out with at least a SINGLE thing I liked. DA2 is still worth playing if you liked the world and whatnot; there were things that got better, like interaction between your companions (They had lives outside of you) and the way people reacted while you did things, instead of just in conversations.

DA2 starts with a bang and DA:O is a bit of the old school start, where you are running around a very peaceful type setting till disaster strikes. Someone told me the other day they hated how slow the new RPGs started versus the old ones and I was like, are you for fucking real. Planescape: Torment is like a solid hour + getting shit in the mortuary, ToEE and PoR are like, fuck I just remember trying to run up to people forever until i found the right person, or the right start. BG1, and NWN2 both start out with you in your home village and you do random shit until something happens, though NWN1 I think starts out with someone attacking I think? Yea, mostly slow starts really.

Anyways, I guess what I am saying is, they're worth playing if for nothing else than good, old fashioned, awesome DMing really. If you expect to crash bandicoot mobs you'll be sorely disappointed.

Platinum was some crazy shit. The only way I ever beat Platinum was either turtling behind a juggernaut tank or rocketing spawn points in the tiny cerberus lab map. That was with pugs though, a decently coordinated premade wouldn't have been too bad. I never did beat collectors on platinum, it's crazy how much harder they are than the other three.

I did solo gold once with a Krogan Vanguard. That shit was pretty fun and surprisingly easy.

Gavinrad_sl said:

Platinum was some crazy shit. The only way I ever beat Platinum was either turtling behind a juggernaut tank or rocketing spawn points in the tiny cerberus lab map. That was with pugs though, a decently coordinated premade wouldn't have been too bad. I never did beat collectors on platinum, it's crazy how much harder they are than the other three.

I did solo gold once with a Krogan Vanguard. That shit was pretty fun and surprisingly easy.

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Vanguards were surprisingly effective, just because it always seemed I was hard to lock down. I remember people think vanguards were just such shit in gold, butr biotic charging for the stagger and with the right abilities stacked you were just zipping across the map constantly. Fun times.

Edit: Also I should say if you like keep building you'll probably really dig Awakening. You do everything from collecting resource nodes to convincing merchants to go to your base to set up shop. Just really cool to see the place grow under you.

Well, once people got geared up, especially with some of the hilariously broken stuff they released in later patches, vanguards were ok in gold. Early on, vanguards were shit and you were right to kick them if you were in a pug. It was hilariously fun speed clearing bronze with a human vanguard though. Krogan Vanguards were probably twice as tough as any of the other vanguard races.

The one thing that really pissed me off about multiplayer was the instakills with no revive chance from brutes, banshees, atlas, phantoms, and whatever collectors could do it. Which was the other reason to boot vanguards from your group. Basically the only amazingly stupid thing Bioware Montreal did with multiplayer. Then they inexplicably made the Juggernaut immune to sync kills, but didn't do the same with the Krogan Battlemaster.

Fuck, I wish I had an active Live subscription, I want to play some more :-/

Yea, I always played in an organized group, so generally I spent a lot of time "herding" creatures in a general direction with charge + nova; especially the cerberus guys with shields. Charging them caused them to pull from behind their shields, so it made it a bit easier to kill them when they showed up. But god almighty, if you aren't johnny on the spot with getting in and getting out you were getting annihilated. It was also fun charging engineers so they dropped their turrets and didn't set them up, but if you were a second late it would get placed and you were dead a second later.

Yea this kind of makes me want to play my salarian engineer.

My problem with the stupid fucking sync kills from banshees was the fact that it was so retardedly inconsistent. Tons of fucking times I would be halfway across a room from a banshee, and all of the sudden I would snap back to right in front of her in the middle of a sync kill.

Sync kills should never have been in the game, ever.

Yea, the combo of barriers and armor was fucking annoying.

I just went out and picked up a copy of DA:O for like 9 bucks lol, gonna play through that and then i'll give divinity a whirl.
I'm assuming dagger rogues aren't shit tier in this game right!?

In dao? No, rogues were pretty shit in dao. Tanks were ok but it's unlikely you could make a better tank than any of many tank companions. archers should've been deleted from the game. Mages were kinda faceroll and they pulled punches in how the Mage origins played out. Supposedly playing a Mage in Dao was supposed to restrict your options and crank up the overall adversity in the same way a Mage in the dragon age world was supposed to feel. Ie playing Mage meant noone trusted you and merchants/npc/companion options reflected this and playing a Blood Mage would've consisted of running for your dear life with nothing but dog as your companion. But they pulled that punch by release and there was no narrative balancing element to playing mages at all so they were just op.

Archers and rogues were OP in DA:O; the only issue was as an archer you had to think in a D&D type way. Don't worry about actual abilities, pay attention to your passives and your companions. For example, an archer can practically solo late game and especially in the DLCs if you make them a bard/ranger class - Keep song of courage on constantly, always take Shale with you for her aura, and ignore anything with haste on it. Never use your abilities unless you absolutely need to (Pinning shot, etc.). You'll need specific things like Lethality and uh, the passive archery boost I think?

Dual dagger rogues are best overall DPS in the game, and going assassination nets you some pretty sweet abilities. I can't remember the second tree you use, I think I always went Shadow.

On hard difficulties those two especially shine, since the AI on your mages does not pay attention to friendly fire.

I enjoyed my archer quite a bit; it felt a bit like making a rogue in D&D with sneak attack + feats. Just retarded damage, but you don't really get to use many abilities, so it might be boring.

If you go dagger rogue, you and Zevran can just destroy shit.

Shadow was from the expansion.

Both daggers and bows got significantly buffed in a fairly late patch, which may be why people were under the impression they were weak. Also, the haste stacking bug can be fixed with mods.

I refuse to believe that anyone familiar with RPGs actually enjoyed Dragon Age 2. What a terrible game in every respect. That's what happens when a company like EA pressures developers to churn out titles so they can have a steady stream of revenue.

Gavinrad_sl said:

Shadow was from the expansion.

Both daggers and bows got significantly buffed in a fairly late patch, which may be why people were under the impression they were weak. Also, the haste stacking bug can be fixed with mods.

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Ohh you're correct. I think you go bard and ranger for archery and bard and assassination for daggers then.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, there were plenty of good things about DA2. By no realistic measurement was it a 'terrible game in every respect'. The gameplay was leaps and bounds ahead of DA:O. DA:O is basically just a reskinned Neverwinter Nights with regard to combat, and it really feels like a 12 year old game during replays. Your companions were fleshed out better and had much more engaging personalities. The story starts out pretty well, even if it doesn't stay that way, and the two comedic parts where Varric is exaggerating what happened to Leliana are fucking hysterical. The DLC companion was pretty fucking awesome, although not as good as the Prothean dude from ME3.

As for the bad, well the stuff I said about companions being better doesn't apply to Anders. Pretty much everything to do with Anders was fucking retarded. Losing your sibling whether you take her to the deep roads or not is stupid. Hell the entire story of the game is so heavily on rails it barely feels like a Bioware game. The fact that they reused the same two or three maps and just rotated them/blocked sections of them off was a fucking insult, as was the laughably stupid ninja death wave encounter design. Plus, for being a sequel, it had shit all to do with the original aside from a couple cameos. Oh and as Sean liked to say, THE TEMPLARS WERE RIGHT. No matter what you do, the mages are all a bunch of blood mages and maleficars. Side with the mages at every single decision point throughout the entire game? The first enchanter still turns into a crazy monster and attacks you.

Honestly, if it weren't for the piss poor story after the deep roads expedition, I don't think people would go so far out of their way to exaggerate what was bad with DA2.

I sided with the mages once in all of my playthroughs, and that was the one where Bethany went to the circle. Every other time templar for life. It's so hard to feel any sympathy for those fucks. I understand you're oppressed, but you're oppressed because they assume that if you get pissed enough you're going to cavort with demons and resort to blood magic. And guess what? WHEN THEY ARE PUSHED THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY DO.

And yea, going from saving the world to saving a city from stupidity is really hard to fathom. It's why I tend to regard both DA:O and DA2 as sort of pieces to a puzzle. DA:O was fine, but I'm hoping DA2 makes more sense when we get to the next installment.