GotG Round 2: Dragon Age: Origins vs. BioShock Infinite

BioShock Infinite was wonderful; Dragon age seems like another generic medieval fantasy RPG...

ewwwww DAO sucks though

DA:O is one of my favorite games ever. I played through it three times when it came out and reading this thread makes me want to play it again. I played Infinite when it came out and honestly I don't really remember a whole lot about it. Not a great sign.

I liked DO:A overall, but....kinda thought the character writing was mediocre? Especially for a Bioware game. Like, I understood what they were going for with each character. Alistai fell flat by virtue of just...not...being funny. Morrigan had her character nuances axed by being the go-to gal for approving of terrible deeds, whether or not it even makes a lick of sense by her established characteristics. Leiliana was supposed to be conflicted between a born-again innocent Chantry girl and seductive, savvy ex-spy, and while I bought the Chantry girl I never bought the bard. Sten was admittedly rad if hard to slot into a party that actually liked talking to people before leaping into violence, Zevran and Wynne were competent but rather boring.

I dunno. DO:A was a fun callback to a bygone Bioware era, but I don't think it was particularly AMAZING, either,

There's better Bioshocks, DA:O was awesome, last of the great Bioware games, with an insane amount replayability.

I know there has been a Great-Turnaround with regards to Infitine, but it is my opinion that when this generation is long gone, Infinite will be remembered long after Dragon Age is forgotten.

I voted for Dragon Age but I think winning this is as far as it's going to go in this bracket.

I haven't beaten either of these games yet -- not for lack of interest, but because I'm terrible about getting through my backlog of games -- but I voted for Dragon Age: Origins. It was my first real foray into Western RPGs, a genre a had these preconceptions of as being overly overly complicated, super serious, and boring. And while DA:O can certainly be very complicated, the charming characters and witty dialogue helped keep me around long enough to grow to appreciate the cerebral pause and play action.

Also, I've never been big on first person shooters, but I feel that Bioshock Infinite deserves praise on having enough exploration in an interesting environment to keep someone like me interested while still being closer to a traditional shooter than I typically enjoy.

As of right now I don't feel strongly about either of those games at all, but I was pretty buzzed about BioShock: Infinite at the time. DA:O just didn't do anything for me, combat felt a little too sluggish and inconsistent, and I didn't really care for the characters.

Bioshock Infinite is the weaker of the two Bioshock games, but it blows Dragon Age away.

This, 100%. Dragon Age: Origins is a game I re-play every year and love just as much as my first run through it. Hell, I originally played it on PS3 where the game was pretty damn sketchy to play, and still loved it! One of my favorite games ever.

Infinite was okay. I only played it mere weeks ago, but am already forgetting half of the game.

I am incredibly surprised by these results.

You guys are crazy about Dragon Age Origins. I picked it up on the 360 when it was $5 and the combat has serious issues. The story is only marginally okay and the only characters I care about are the Alistair, Leliana, and Morrigan. Mass Effect 2 just does everything better.


Bioshock Infinite all the way.

Dragon Age is probably my favorite Bioware game. So there.

Over BG2 ?

Shiiiiit bro.

Bioshock infinite is a highly flawed game but that ending was incredible. Like seriously it was really crazy.

Whoops. I meant to say Dragon Age is my favorite Bioware game that isn't BG 2. So there.

1. BioShock 1
2. BioShock 2
3. A shitton of DLC
4. BioShock Infinite
5. A shitton more DLC

Just two.

@arbitrarywater: :P

And the grand tragedy; of the three main BioShock games, the best in the series is the only one that doesn't get representation. Especially if you take Minerva's Den into account, BioShock 2 is the tops.

For the record, i'd love to just watch somebody who really loves DA:O play it. It's blowing my mind how much some of the people in this topic are in love with that game, and it's making me really want to see the perspective of someone who wasn't totally apathetic to the whole thing like me.

DA:O has my favorite combat system. all time.

or maybe it's the way, when you pause the screen mid-fight, with someone in trouble, and blood flying everywhere, and spell effects crackling, the game can resemble fantasy paintings by, like, larry elmore and all those dudes,

i used to run unorthodox parties on nightmare, and spend an hour on a five minute fight whenever possible, maximizing efficiency, keeping everyone on their feet, and enjoying those long beautiful pauses.

never finished a bioshock, and infinite will be the last time i try. the gameplay is not engaging. also the look is the wrong side of artificial for me, feels like I'm stuck in a musical.

Origins is garbage, Infinite is okay

DA:O Is the last good Bioware game. It is also almost as good as BG2.

DA:O is an incredible game, infinite is a shooter with really good art.

I got Dragon Age for free on origin, is it really that good? Kinda makes me go "meh."

The writing in Bioshock is inarguably better, but I just had a lot more fun with Dragon Age. And that was towards the beginning of this generation, and it was one of those "holy shit!" games for me. Call it nostalgia, but I'm throwing my vote in for DA: O

Strangely enough, I feel the opposite.

I still haven't finished BioShock Infinite, because I found the gameplay more frustrating than enjoyable (and the setting and atmosphere didn't keep me hooked the same way the first BioShock did).

Dragon Age, on the other hand, is easily one of my favorite games from one of my favorite developers.

@video_game_king: I meant of the two included in the game of the generation discussion. Not that DLC counts anyway, and a sequel made by an entirely different team than the others barely counts.

Because...? I mean, by that logic, the vast majority of the Zelda series is effectively non-canon.

Bioware's last good game vs. Irrational's first bad game. Not that hard of a choice.

@video_game_king said:

Or most video game sequels in general "don't count"? It's a weird thing that a lot of gamers don't acknowledge, but year-to-year, the staff at any given studio is always in flux. Even if the same key designers are in charge, things can vary wildly depending on the producers, the art team, the gameplay programmers, etc.

For example, the Irrational that made Bioshock Infinite would be very different from the Irrational that made Bioshock, which would in turn be very different from the Irrational that made Freedom Force (I love reminding people that this game exists). Also, I am completely baffled that there is a 3 year gap between Freedom Force and its sequel, especially when its sequel is a glorified expansion pack that only has a few new heroes and some modest graphical improvements.

And I hate continuing to confuse it with Freedom Fighters on the GameCube.

@video_game_king: I also think of that as a Gamecube game, despite it apparently coming out on everything (and being featured as a Load Our Last Save on the OG Xbox a couple years back). Though I guess I was always browsing the Gamecube section at game stores in that generation because I mainly played Gamecube stuff, so that probably biases my recollection of a lot of multiplatform games.

YEAH Dragon Age Origins.
One of the RPGs of the generation, if not the best.

I will never finish origins, it just never hooked me.

I'm actually really surprised to hear people say its an important game though. It just seems like a typical rpg.

@lyisa said:

I guess it's important because typical RPGs barely get made anymore, and DA: Origins was quite good? Similarly, RTS games barely get made anymore, so the fact that Starcraft II came out and has a reasonably balanced multiplayer is notable, even though the fundamental units of the game are still really, really similar to Starcraft 1. Also similarly, Dead Space gets credit because hardly any big budget horror games get made at all these days unless they're a long-running series like Resident Evil, so it's commendable that Dead Space got made and was an original series that is actually pretty dang good, before it went full retard in Dead Space 3.

It's a tough choice, but I went with Infinite in the end. I just don't agree with any of the negative things people say about it. I loved the combat (for the most part, I agree that in the moments where it is a corridor shooter it is a bit lame). I think the story is brillopads. I think it looks gorgeous. I think it makes smart improvements to the presentation of Bioshock. I think the story disappears into its own navel in the best way possible. It left me thinking about stuff for a long while after I'd finished it.

But I did love DA:O at the time, I can't lie. I put at least 100 hours into my first play-through. I was excited to get a big-budget, "proper" western RPG. But more and more, and over (attempts at) subsequent playthroughs I've become more and more dissatisfied with it. I played on a console which everyone tells me is the wrong way to do it, so that might be a part of it. The Combat is just super unwieldy on consoles. I think the balance is really poor; yes you can do fun things with warriors and rogues, but then you fight one of the dragons and realise that oh, actually what you need is 3 mages spamming the cone of cold equivalent. The story has some nice ideas - I particularly like the idea of having different intros for different character set ups, it really got me thinking about how I was going to role play the character, beyond simply playing to an alignment - but it also has a lot of garbarge in there, whether it's kind of lame attempts to be "dark" or stuff that is basically just super generic. The Most Garbage was probably all the romance stuff; it's definitely the game that made me really realise how lame all of that is in all Bioware games. I hated basically all of the characters, as well.

But anyway, I'm not going to say DA:O is bad, because that would be disingenuous. As I say, I've played a lot of it. But generally speaking I would much rather play any of the infinity engine games before I played DA:O, or I would rather play the Witcher 2. It's just not up there for me.

Origins obviously. How did we even end up with two Bioshock games in the bracket?

@jimbo: Because somehow they weren't first round opponents?

Thats fair I guess. Despite enjoying it I had similar sentiments towards SC2 as I do DA: Origins, and reading through some of the posts about it makes me feel a lot less bitter about DA:O winning it (especially since I couldn't give nearly the same passionate argument for Infinite as some people have DA:O).

And I'd like to clarify that what I played of it wasn't terrible, it just wasn't a game I was particularly drawn to in terms of its world or characters as I had other Bioware games. Maybe its a slower burn than those other games and I just didn't get far enough to see it.

Dragons reign supreme as Origins wins with 55% of the vote and 752 votes cast.