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Egge

Controversial opinion: I like save-scumming. Acquiring a lot of loot in Deathloop and dying just before I exit the map is not fun.

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Precursors: STALKER in Space or Borderlands with factions?

By Egge 2 Comments

   

  
  
 Precursors is one of those absurdly ambitious genre-bending titles which in today's gaming market could only have been developed for the PC by an Eastern European developer (in this case it's Kiev-based Deep Shadows, which previously released the rather infamous Boiling Point and its sequel). 

Precurors is essentially an open-world shooter with some fairly prominent RPG elements. Also, the game has several planets to explore freely (on foot or with vehicles), tons of loot to pick up, a fully fledged faction system and even some space combat thrown in for good measure. The on-foot shooter mechanics in and of themselves are fairly unremarkable, the art design is mostly forgettable, the English localization frequently comes off as downright laughable and the game world and quest structure predictably have their fair share of open world glitchiness, but there's no denying the sheer ambition that went into the development of Precursors. The game feels like some kind of a delightfully epic mix of Borderlands, Stalker, Fallout 3 and Elite, so any PC nerd with the slightest interest in open-ended action/adventure RPGs should check it out.

As with most any interesting PC titles, the galaxy's best gaming blog RPS has written very informatively about this game;
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/04/wot-i-think-precursors/

Buy Precursors here (I got it for much less than the standard price during a recent sale so it probably will get cheaper again at some point):
http://www.gamersgate.com/
2 Comments

Thoughts on Dragon Age 2 (Part #4) - Collateral Damage

By Egge 1 Comments

  


Modern BioWare games have a tendency to break down noticeably on higher difficulty settings, albeit in all sorts of interesting and funny ways. The friendly AI in Mass Effect 2 really starts showing its limitations on the (otherwise awesome) Insane difficulty mode - requiring constant and often tedious micromanagement during most of the longer combat sequences - and in Dragon Age 2 the main problem is that the game simply wasn't designed for friendly fire, which is only available on Nightmare. As can be seen in this video (at around 2:15 or so), leaving AoE-capable party members in the hands of some generic Tactics script can leave the player in a world of hurt... 

Other than that, replaying DA2 on higher difficulty with an "imported" DA:O save file is rather enjoyable, and given the side quest-focused structure of the game it's easy to jump in for a quick fix and cut through some trash mobs just for fun whenever you got 15 minutes to spare. As much as I agree in theory with many of the complaints levelled at the DA2, I can't help but find the basic gameplay to be a surprisingly (and perhaps undeservedly) rewarding experience.    
1 Comments

A Quick Visit to Testosterone Shooter Land

By Egge 11 Comments

  


Lately I've been taking advantage of a few digital download sales to get hold of some games which I don't expect will run particularly well on my weak PC, but which might come in handy once I decide to finally upgrade my hardware (might happen fairly soon...or not at all). While there are few developments in the gaming world which I'm less excited about than the rise of the modern military shooter (being more of an old school Doom/Painkiller kind of FPS fan myself), Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was reasonably cheap on Steam the other week and I just couldn't resist getting it; if only for patriotic reasons (I'm Swedish just like DICE). Also, they did create the wonderful Mirror's Edge after all...    

Although I realize BFBC2's primary selling point is the multiplayer, the actual campaign (which got a lukewarm reception among critics) is the only truly interesting part of the game for a singleplayer dogmatic like myself. Judging by the first few hours of BC2 this seems to be an alright SP game, but most of its alright-ness comes from the impressive environmental capabilities of the Frostbite engine - which is a nice example of that quintessential Swedish/Germanic tech wizardry - rather than the actual game design as such. The story and characters in BC2 is not much to write home about, although there has been an interesting divide between critics like Jeff Gerstmann who seem to genuinely enjoy the action movie stereotypes and other reviewers who think those same cliches are among the game's larger problems.  Like all modern shooters, Bad Company 2 has its fair share of unimaginative "whack a mole" moments; during which by far the most efficient approach is to simply wait for the enemies to pop out of cover so that you can headshot them back to the stone age (which is not exactly my idea of what a shooter should be all about). The outdoor environments look all nice and big but are actually relatively confined, and the game definitely has more in common with your typical corridor shooter than with less linear FPSs like Far Cry.
  
  
Given the squad-based focus of the game and its plot, I do appreciate that the friendly AI is at least somewhat capable of taking down enemies on their own, and while the more scripted aspects of the game's set pieces feel just as limiting as in other modern shooters the squad mates seem to adjust their combat tactics nicely depending on how the player approaches a certain combat scenario. Another agreeable aspect of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is its sound design, with which DICE have given the weapons their appropriate loudness, managed to squeeze all sorts of nice effects into the chaos of the battlefield and also made sure the vast outdoor environments have enough ambient noise in them.
11 Comments

Ferelden in the shadow of Kirkwall: Replaying Origins after DA2

By Egge 12 Comments

I was planning on taking these random thoughts from the video descriptions accompanying the YouTube videos related to my second playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins and edit them into some kind of cohesive text...but, yeah, that's just too much work. Instead I chose to merely put them all together in one blog post, which at least has the benefit of retaining both the brevity of the original text chunks and the immediate and decidedly impressionistic nature of the writing. The unifying theme should still be reasonably clear, however, as my primary concern was to reflect on Origins through the lens of my recent experience with Dragon Age 2.

Part 1, Evil Woman

  
I have only played through Dragon Age: Origins once, and although that playthrough was at least 60 hours long there's still *a lot* I haven't experienced in this sizeable RPG. A large amount of the unseen content is DLC which was released long after I finished the game - that includes the expansion Awakening as well as Leliana's Song, Witch Hunt and more (yes, I know most of the downloadable stuff wasn't any good) - but even some of the most famous characters of the core game remain relatively unknown to me. 

Morrigan is without a doubt the best example of this. She was almost impossible to get along with (without spamming the gift option which is just too cheap) when I played through the game as a good (female) mage, so I left her at the camp after Lothering and simply never used her as a party member again. Since a lot of people seem to think there's something really compelling about this seemingly unpleasant and dogmatic social darwinist (other than the fact that her wardrobe leaves little to the imagination), I've been meaning to return to DA:O to get to know her properly. Too bad I have to roleplay a complete asshole just in order to get her to talk to me without sneering and complaining about my supposed stupidity all the time (ok, she *still* sneers and complains but not quite as much as before)...

Part 2, Corridor Crawler

  
  
Replaying Origins after just having finished Dragon Age 2 is an interesting experience. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, one of the most immediately noticeable differences between DA:O and DA2 is the cooldown on the Heal spell, which is actually a lot longer in the second (supposedly less tactical) game than in the first one. Positiong in combat is more important in Origins, but it seems that in this particular RPG series it has always been rather difficult to avoid getting everybody lumped together in the middle of the screen (...which in gameplay terms makes more sense in DA2). Being able to zoom out to a top-down viewpoint and manage party member armor are two really satisfying elements which are only available in DA:O, though, and there's no question that the "Hard" difficulty is more challenging in Origins than in Dragon Age 2.

Part 3, How Not To Be A Hero

  
  
You can do some rather despicable things in DA:O which I wasn't quite expecting; such as abandoning the village of Lothering to be massacred by undead creatures. A more enjoyable endeavor is to make poor Isolde more upset than she already is...

Part 4, Descending into Undermountain

  
  
It's a truth universally acknowledged that everyone hates the Deep Roads. Indeed, one of the problems with such massive roleplaying games as Dragon Age: Origins is that the dungeons can feel a bit *too* epic at times, and the Orzammar main quest is an excellent example of what happens when poor pacing combined with the sheer size of it all makes the whole experience needlessly drawn-out and tedious. Someone said recently that Dragon Age 2 feels like a mere collection of side quests compared to the grand over-arching storyline of Origins, but one needn't be a complete iPhone gaming nerd to appreciate bite-sized challenges which don't overstay their welcome.

So far during my otherwise enjoyable second playthrough of DA:O I've pretty much become fed up with each main quest quite some time before I finally reached the end of it. The Circle Tower had its confusing maze-like Fade challenge, the Redcliffe story arc lost its focus somewhere in the Ruined Temple (I hate that bridge puzzle, by the way) and now Paragon of Her Kind is bound to slowly wear down my patience with its atmospheric but endlessly repetitive tunnel crawling.

By comparison, Dragon Age 2's own little Deep Roads expedition was a fast and furious dungeon romp which included several rather memorable combat-related set pieces (before unfortunately descending into that awful Rock Wraith battle), and also made sure to reward the player with some interesting plot-related developments. I feel like what DA2 lacked in terms of epic scale and grand design it often made up for by offering the player steady progress at a brisk pace while still offering (on the harder difficulty levels anyway) a variety of combat challenges and just enough story exposition per individual quest to keep things interesting.

And who said Dragon Age: Origins didn't have trash mobs?

Part 5, Eventful Horizons

  
  
I had somehow forgotten (or perhaps repressed) the point at which the Orzammar main quest suddenly turns into some kind of Dead Space-esque horror fest. While more than a little bit jarring, the whole infestation thing fits rather nicely as a conclusion to that claustrophobic theme of descending ever further into the long-forgotten thaigs.

During my first playthrough, I remember being pretty much exhausted by the absurdly lengthy Paragon of Her Kind quest, and the only thing I cared about at this point was whether the Broodmother would turn out to be the last boss before finally returning to the surface or not. Needless to say, I wasn't too happy to meet Branka and her Golems...

Part 6, Shalemate

  
  
Ok, so I may not exactly be the sharpest tool in the shed, but despite knowing from my first playthrough what exact manner of creatures would be protecting the boss in at the end of the Deep Roads dungeon I figured it could be a good idea to bring Shale along this time around. He's tough enough to endure a long hard fight against other golems...right?

Shale's defection once I chose the "evil" option (i.e. to keep the Anvil and fight Caridin) should not have come as a total surprise, but it did. Remembering just how difficult I had initially found the Branka fight on Normal during my first playthrough, I thought it was going to be really challenging to survive Caridin on Hard with only three party members. Turns out it was quite easy with the use of Cone of Cold, 20-30 Health Poultices, some patience and a lot of Oghren's Mighty Blows. Too bad I wasn't allowed to turn the drunken dwarf into a replacement Stone Warrior afterwards...

Part 7, Leader of the Pack

  
By far the most interesting and unexpected story-related choice I have been able to make so far during this second playthrough of DA:O has been to side with the werewolves and slaughter the Dalish elves during the Nature of the Beast main quest. I actually had no idea you could even do that, and had for some reason assumed that the only alternative solution was to simply kill off all the werewolves without bothering to investigate Zathrian's involvement in their curse. Unlike most of the other "evil" things I've done during this playthrough, being able to kill off those annoying self-righteous treehuggers was satisfying, indeed...

Part 8, In Vino Veritas

  
  
Since I reduced Shale to a pile of rocks I have had to bring Oghren into my active party. During my first playthrough I barely even talked to the drunken dwarf, but now I think I'm slowly warming to that old blockheaded berserker. Asschabs!

On a more philosophical note, what is more worrying; that Oghren can't correctly determine the gender of my character - or that a reckless alchoholic is wearing my expensive Blood Dragon armor?

Part 9, A Game of Thrones

  
  
I don't care one bit about the overarching, supposedly "epic" storyline of Dragon Age: Origins. As far as I'm concerned, the writers at Bioware would have shown more maturity - not to mention realism about the average player's attention span - had they not bothered to come up with such a needlessly convoluted, comically lore-obsessed justification for what's basically a standard orcs-and-dragons plot device. Blights and Darkspawns might fit nicely in a second-rate sword & sorcery novel, but engaging in both the actual combat-related gameplay as well as the dialogue-oriented character development of DA:O are far more compelling activities than having to wade through endless Codex entries and tedious story exposition concerning such highly conventional fantasy material.

However, there's one very specific point at which the otherwise long-winded storytelling in Dragon Age: Origins gets spectacularly good, and that is the Landsmeet. When the nobility has finally gathered to vote on Loghain's rule, this hitherto predictable high fantasy story of a brave Warden uniting the lands against an evil usurper suddenly takes a sharply political turn, and ends up being a fascinating, messy and painful event in which none of the various possible outcomes can be characterized as unequivocally "good" or "evil". There's a price to be paid for every choice, and some actors will inevitably gain in power at the expense of others in this emotionally fraught zero-sum game of morally ambiguous political intrigue. This is easily the best combination of solid writing and complex choice-related gameplay Bioware has ever produced, and as far as I'm concerned it constitutes the game's "real" ending; with which a tediously outdrawn dragon fight cannot even begin to compete.

Incidentally, the full extent to which the player is able to influence the end result of the Landsmeet actually wasn't known to me until fairly recently, when I heard that it is possible to spare Loghain's life, recruit him as a Gray Warden and even have poor Alistair executed(!). Needless to say, that is the deliciously ironic outcome I ended up chosing for this particular playthrough...

Part 10, The Enemy Within

  
  
Having Loghain in my party is both ironic and weird, but also very interesting. Making him a recruitable character at all is by far the most drastic way in which Bioware communicates that this character is one of very few video game antagonists who are actually three-dimensional enough to make some admissions about the errors of their own judgement, adapt to changing circumstances on the ground and start playing a more constructive part in the overall storyline. Indeed, everything that makes the Landsmeet-related choices of Dragon Age's last act so compelling hinges on Loghain being a much more complex and ambiguous character than his clear narrative function earlier in the game would seem to imply.

Part 11, The Dark Respawn

  
One of the reasons why I bothered playing through the entirety of Dragon Age: Origins again was so that I could import a fresh endgame save into the sizeable expansion pack Awakening, which I haven't played at all until now. 

Starting Awakening for the first time after having finished DA2 adds some poignancy to the experience given that we now know that BioWare is taking the series in is different direction; and that this expansion in all likelihood is the last we will ever see of the distinctly Origins-like Dragon Age gameplay. Also, I want to know if there was ever a point in the timeline of this game world at which the apostate Anders was *not* an extremely annoying character...

Part 12, Friends with Benefits

  
Awakening begins with a bang. The opening section is a finely tuned combination of combat and exploration set in atmospheric new environments where interesting characters are constantly introduced (or re-introduced) - all leading up to an intriguing little miniboss fight which neatly sets up the central conflict of the main quest. The lean quest structure actually reminds me a lot more of DA2's economically paced dungeon crawls (which, in this particular context, is a Good Thing) than the frequently ponderous assignments in Origins, and it's sure going to be interesting to see where Awakening goes from here...

Part 13, Dead Man Walking

   
    Though it might seem obvious, it's worth pointing out that Awakening is a proper expansion pack - not a DLC pack. This is most evident in all the new environments Bioware created specifically for this mini-campaign. While some assets are reused from Origins, there are still countless of instances where the developers could quite legitimately have used stuff from the main game and instead chose to create something entirely fresh and new. For example, the Blackmarsh doesn't look at all like the Korcari Wilds (despite both areas being distinctly swamp-like), and the strange network of caverns beneath Knotwood Hills are very different from the typical Deep Road thaigs one saw in Origins. In this sense, Awakening is the opposite of Dragon Age 2, which seized on every opportunity to use the same assets to represent thematically similar locations.


Part 14, Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

  
  
So far I've killed no less than two potential party members in Awakening; Nathaniel and Velanna. In both cases the decision to not have them join my party was largely based on the fact that I didn't require yet another character in their respective classes - my main character is a rogue so I had no need for Nathaniel, whereas Velanna would have fulfilled the same role as Anders - but at least in the former case the choice was certainly made easier by the fact that Nathaniel seemed to be such a whining, miserable little man. While it might seem that I'm locking myself out of content this way, not becoming acquainted with all characters during a given playthrough obviously enhances the expansion's replay value greatly.

Also, summarily executing potential allies simply feels good when you're trying to roleplay as an evil character...

Part 15, Death By Metal

  
For better or worse, combat in Awakening is basically Origins cranked up all the way to eleven. Levels 20-30 give the player access to a whole slew of new and potentially devastating talents, and the addition of stamina potions means that fighters can keep dishing out copious amounts of damage even through prolonged battles. The result of all this high-level mayhem is that even on the same difficulty setting used while playing through the main game, the expansion pack is noticeably easier than Origins and only really becomes challenging during the last main quest and in various optional dragon fights. However, despite having much more of a hack'n slash feel to it I found that the gameplay remains fun and addictive throughout the Awakening mini-campaign.

Part 16, Heart of the Swarm

 
  
I bought Awakening on a whim one day several months ago when it was featured in a sale on Direct2Drive, and at the time I really didn't know if I'd ever get around to actually playing it. I first finished Origins way back in November 2009, and because that particular playthrough was plagued by frustrating bugs and immersion-breaking glitches I did not exactly feel a strong urge to return to the game anytime soon. Just before Dragon Age 2 came out I did have some vague plans to play through DA:O again but in the end I never bothered with it.

Thus, it was only after having played through the entirety of Origins' controversial sequel that I finally returned to DA:O for an ambitious combined Origins+Awakening+Golems of Amgarrak+Witch Hunt playthrough which by now is surprisingly close to completion. I still have those last two stand-alone DLC packs left to go through, but I'm really glad I took the time to go back to The Big RPG of 2009 to experience the gameplay on the Hard difficulty setting, get to know the characters I never had much time for during my first playthrough and - last but not least - enjoy such a well-rounded high quality expansion pack as Awakening turned out to be.

Part 17, Between a Rock and a Hard Place

  
  
The Golems of Amgarrak DLC is nothing special but at least features an interesting and atmospheric little dungeon and also offers some reasonably challenging combat encounters. The Harvester boss at the end was pretty tedious (...then again I think *all* bosses are boring, irrespective of game or genre) but at least I got lucky and the AI glitched out during the second half of the battle so I could just stand still and punch him till he was dead...

Part 18, Witching Hour

  
  
The Witch Hunt DLC was regarded as fairly disappointing by many people at the time of its release, but in my opinion it's at least more fun than Return to Ostagar, Warden's Keep and Golems of Amgarrak. Sure, the recycled Origins areas are lazy and like the other DLC packs it's all over in less than two hours (even on Hard), but I thought the two new party members had some pretty funny banter and the story ties to Dragon Age 2 (to the character Merrill in particular) were a bit more interesting than I had expected. The brief dialogue with Morrigan right at the end of the DLC didn't go anywhere at first, but there's an interesting choice right at the end which may have actual relevance in some future Dragon Age game.  
12 Comments

Avadon: The Black Fortress out for PC now

By Egge 13 Comments

  

  

Anyone who says there aren't any real RPGs anymore clearly haven't played Jeff Vogel's games. The consistently funny and thoughtful Seattle-based indie developer have not only been making isometric, party-based and turn-based games since 1994 - he's also been able to earn a living by doing just that. Apart from delivering generous demos and serving a dedicated fan base with precisely the kind of games they actually want to play, an absolutely essential part of Spiderweb's business strategy is that the company is not giving its games away for, say, $10 or less. While there are promos and discounts occasionally, Vogel has always insisted that huge and ambitious independently developed games must be allowed to reach a certain price point or else the possibility of making any kind of profit (not to mention the ambition and depth) will be sucked away from the indie scene entirely. This sentiment has of course been echoed by various Apple denigrators recently, who worry about what the pricing on the App Store is doing for game development (...which I guess makes it all the more ironic that Avadon is coming to the iPad later this year).

What makes Avadon especially interesting (apart from the upcoming iDevice release) is that Vogel both has left his long-established series Avernum (which focused on exploring huge cavernous kingdoms) and GeneForge (which was all about summoning and the faction system) behind and started an entirely new series with a noticeably upgraded graphics engine. Among other things, the tweaked engine provides more detailed sprites as well as seamless (as opposed to grid-based) movement inbetween combat scenarios. The skill and party systems have likewise been significantly changed, and jn a particularly radical move the custom-made party members from Spiderweb's older titles have now been replaced by distinct characters designed and written by the developer himself. This allows Vogel to insert unique dialogue specific to these party members and thus have them react to story events and comment on the various parts of the world which the player is exploring. Thus, there has been some BioWare-ification of the classic Spiderweb formula, although players who have gone through the full game say that the party banter element is still relatively limited in comparison with more heavily story-focused games.

So far I've only just scratched the surface of this generously sized RPG, but I'm very much looking forward to see what the world of Avadon: The Black Fortress has in store for me. Let's party like it's 1993 and no one has heard of a bad Ultima game yet!
Buy the game or download demo at:
http://www.spidweb.com/
13 Comments

Age of Fear: The Undead King

By Egge 1 Comments

It was only by skimming through some random reader comments on the excellent Rock Paper Shotgun blog that I learned that this game even exists, but Age of Fear is a very interesting-looking tactical strategy game which is apparently out now-ish (April 10th 2011) and available for a reduced price during a limited period of time. The top-down graphics may be simple, but if the tutorial-esque demo is anything to go by there's some real depth to the gameplay and lots of different soldier types, spells and special abilities to mess around with. You recruit units inbetween each battle and the ones who survive carry over to the next combat scenario, which is prefaced by a bit of text-based narrative development. The full game comes with one "good" and one (suspiciously Wizardry IV-esque) "evil" campaign, so there would seem to be a healthy amount of content included, too. Buy a DRM-free copy of Age of Fear and/or check out the demo at the following website:

http://www.age-of-fear.net/

Note: Please excuse me for learning the controls during the recording of this video. If the gameplay comes off as a bit clunky, rest assured it's only me making it look more complicated than it actually is...

1 Comments

Retro Revival - Realms of the Haunting (2011, GOG.COM)

By Egge 5 Comments

  

  
It would be an understatement to say that I've waited for this GOG release for quite some time now. Gremlin Interactive's ambitious, innovative and criminally underrated adventure/horror hybrid combines exploration and puzzle-solving with first-person shooter combat and full motion video in ways which feel almost as fresh and unusual in 2011 as they did 15 years ago. RotH may have some similarities with Alone in the Dark as well as the Japanese survival horror genre, but this game's FPS mechanics alone are enough to distinguish it from competition.

One of the best things about Realms of the Haunting is its terrific atmosphere, which is greatly enhanced by exceptional sound design, generous amounts of voice acting and surprisingly decent FMV cutscenes. Despite having seen these particular parts of the game several times before, I got really immersed in the experience while recording this video and was genuinely freaked out by every door which suddenly slammed shut behind the player character.

The game's proprietary graphics engine likewise deserves mentioning. While not being quite state of the art even by 1997 standards, as far as sprite-based pre-Quake engines go it's a pretty robust and versatile system with lots of functions (such as proper inventory management) which were rather uncommon in 3D engines at the time. The shooter elements admittedly feel a bit stiff and rudimentary compared to games like Doom or Duke 3D, but as one part of the game's multi-faceted gameplay the fast-paced combat sequences do a great job of complementing the atmospheric adventure elements.

Buy Realms of the Haunting here:  http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/realms_of_the_haunting
5 Comments

Thoughts on Dragon Age 2: Closing Remarks [ENDING]

By Egge 6 Comments

   

  
[Caution: The video above is very spoiler-heavy, whereas the text below is not.] 

Dragon Age 2 is a good RPG. It's by no means an unqualified success in any particular area, and none of the changes made to the gameplay - dramatic as they initially may seem - are substantial or interesting enough to amount to a full-blown "paradigm shift" a la the genre-redefining Mass Effect 2. And although I'm not necessarily disappointed by the changes made to the gameplay established in DA:O, the absence of friendly fire on anything below the Nightmare difficulty is indeed a significant issue. Playing DA2 can still be a ton of fun, though, and even after having played for many hours I still enjoyed rushing into yet another combat sequence despite often knowing more or less what to expect.

While I have a certain degree of sympathy for the legion of users who have complained about DA2's combat, quest and level design, I won't stop defending the game's approach to storytelling, which is easily the single most compelling and innovative aspect of Dragon Age 2. While the character relationships and dialogue all work in reasonably similar ways compared to earlier Bioware games, the absence of a clearly defined villain and "main objective" as well as the dramatically reduced size of the game world are aspects of DA2 which made the narrative experience that much more enjoyable for me than DA:O ever was.

Lacking a central antagonist and not knowing early on what Hawke's story is really "about" might seem like genuine problems, and if DA2 was a movie or a novel I would readily agree. The thing is, DA2 is a *game* and as such is much better suited for a loose narrative framework which encourages methodical exploration, genuine immersion in a game world and gradual discovery of how all the various pieces fit together. Indeed, an unfortunate tendency in today's gaming community - exacerbated by titles such as Heavy Rain which limit player interactivity to a bare, fork-in-road-based minimum - is to expect a "cinematic" experience, which shoehorns this naturally limitless medium into a restrictive Hollywood blockbuster formula with rudimentary plot structures and intrusive scripting. As far as player motivation goes, all those small but not insignificant moral decisions and character interactions (including their interesting consequences in later acts) kept things fresh and interesting despite the initial lack of a clear end goal, and made me a lot more invested in the game than a zillions Blights and silly dragon-demons ever could.

Perhaps the best praise I can give Dragon Age 2 is to add that after having spent 60 hours methodically playing through the game on Hard, as soon as the end credits started rolling I felt a strong urge to create a new character and see how things would develop if I choose another class, took another approach to the main plot and, above all, chose to handle interactions with my party members in completely different ways. This genuine interest in the choices and consequences of DA2 was something I never felt with DA:O and it goes to show that, for all its noteworthy (though not game-breaking) issues, Dragon Age 2 stands as one of the most interesting and consistently worthwhile RPG experiences to have come around in a very long time. 
6 Comments

Thoughts on combat in Dragon Age 2

By Egge 1 Comments

   

  
 At its best, Dragon Age 2's combat is fast-paced and intense but with a certain tactical dimension to it. While it goes without saying that the gameplay could be much *more* skill-based and demanding than it actually is, DA2's battle mechanics still hold up pretty well when compared to just about any other realtime RPG system (with or without a pause function). There are some issues, however, which I now feel comfortable bringing up after having spent around 40 hours with the game so far (I'm currently somewhere in the middle of Act 2 and playing on Hard difficulty). 

For starters, I've never been a fan of boss fights regardless of genre so it should come as no surprise that I find the bosses in this game to be somewhat tedious. The tougher enemies normally don't add anything noteworthy to the gameplay beyond gigantic health bars which simply take forever to deplete, and fighting a single enemy - often supported by annoying low-level critters appearing in waves at predictable intervals - is usually far less complex and interesting than dealing with a couple of different mid-level foes (such as, for example, the dreaded Revenant/Arcane Horror/Skeleton Archer combo).

Another not entirely successful aspect of the combat is the frequent spawning of new enemies during on-going battles. In principle I like the idea of shaking things up a bit and making sure the player can never know exactly how many foes he or she will have to defeat before the battle is over. This is especially important in a series like Dragon Age in which health and mana regenerates after each combat scenario is finished. The spawn system in DA2 is unfortunalety a bit predictable and too easily avoided, since it's almost always possible to simply leave the room with the spawn point, lure the first wave of enemies away from the room in question and later return to finish off the remaining, recently spawned enemies.

Finally, one of the most surprising combat changes from DA:O is the removal of friendly fire even on Hard difficulty (it's available on Nightmare, but most players - myself included - will never play on that difficulty setting). To be fair, I'm not sure that feature would even work during normal circumstances given the generally fast-paced new gameplay of DA2, but it's one of those crucial tactical elements which can have a major influence on the structure of the combat system in any RPG.    
1 Comments

How a Baldur's Gate nerd fails to dislike Dragon Age 2

By Egge 4 Comments

   

  
Now that the game has been out for a week, the majority opinion about Dragon Age 2 among reviewers and regulars players alike seems to be that the game's combat and character development have been greatly simplified compared to its predecessor, that neither the writing nor general pacing of the game lives up to DA:O's standards and that there's an overall repetitiveness and lack of polish which together suggests that the game was rushed by its publisher.

In terms of the facts alone I certainly find it hard to refute all, or even most, of these general criticisms about the game. At the same time, however, I can honestly say that so far none of these flaws have truly bothered me personally. Part of the explanation comes down to individual expectations and experiences with previous games from the developer. Unlike a lot of people I never saw Dragon Age: Origins as a successful and thoroughly convincing return to the design philosophy of Baldur's Gate. To put things mildly, a minimalist four character party system with automatically regenerating health/mana after every battle and humorless dark fantasy settings is *not* my idea of a "spiritual successor" to Bioware's D&D-based classics. Also, I've long since accepted the fact that the developer in question has simply moved on from its roots and become much more interested in things like storytelling, character interactions and building dramatic tension than adhering to strict genre conventions.

While it's true that the Dragon Age combat has lost a lot of its tactical edge in the transition to a more streamlined system, the fast-paced battles in DA2 do have an appropriately intense feel to them (on Hard difficulty, anyway) and there's a real sense that anything could go horribly wrong if you let your guard down for just a second. It's not as rewarding or fun as it could be, true, but it's also not as weirdly sterile, finicky and anemic as DA:O's combat could be at times. I would not mind it if DA3 moved back into more conventional RPG territory but for now DA2's semi-tactical combat experience provides a nice diversion.

From a narrative standpoint there's no clear villain at the outset and thus the game's story is not "about" anything in the traditional way one might expect from a fantasy RPG. As someone who couldn't care less about all the Archdemons, Darkspawns and Blights which made a lot of story exposition in DA:O so tedious to sit through, I thoroughly enjoy what DA2 does with its focus on a resourceful protagonist who sets out to make a living for him- or herself, provide for his/her family and slowly build up a reputation in an interesting urban environment fraught with tension and political discord. And while it might be a matter of taste, I actually find the characters in DA2 to be a bit more interesting than most of DA:O's party members (of which I only liked Alistair and Leliana).

In short, after having spent my first 20 hours with the game (which was just enough to take me to the end of Act 1 and finish every single side quest) my impressions of DA2 are mostly positive. It's certainly no great revolution in RPG design and its noticeable flaws ensure that it doesn't help establish a clear path forward for Bioware's future efforts, but in and of itself it's a damn fine little game.    
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