And that game kinda sucked compared to 1 and 2, especially 1 imo. Bioware has been on a long and steady decline. Mass effect and the two first DA games have kept them going but it has just been miss after miss for a long time now.
The worst thing that happened to Dragon Age was that Mass Effect was a huge success.
They clearly wanted Hawke to be the Fantasy-Sheppard. The series moved more and more away from it's roots in the BG-games, and more to just hack-and-slash with occasional ability activations and shallow dialog choices.
I liked 2, probably more then most, I think centering it around a family and a city was a refreshing take for a fantasy epic. But the cracks were already forming back then, it didn't look like there was the ever same 'plan' for the Franchise as for the ME-triology.
Lol, no Veilguard is the worst DA game, for me Inquisition is not as good as DA2 but at least that is debatable between the two. Veilguard stands alone as the worst thing to ever happen to DA.
Same same. I played it on release. It was massively disappointing, and yet the reviews said otherwise. They must have only played a few hours. Had a similar experience with Far Cry 2.
That's around when I gave up on reviews by sites, but slightly before youtube reviews became big.
I genuinely dont get why people consider DA2 to be better than DAI. That game feels so cheap, has such little scope, and the story is ultimately just weird and has little consequence. It is somewhat self-contained, but it has very little meaningful interactions, is laughably formulaic, and it is very corridor-like. Hawke just feels like a doofus the whole time.
DAI is better in virtually every possible aspect of an RPG game. Grandiose scope, much better graphics, lasting consequences, fun class design, meaningful romance, many possible interactions, you are building Skyhold which changes in front of your eyes. It is filled with quests, fun-ish sidequests, expands upon the lore CONSIDERABLY, every zone progresses differently, the Inquisitor is also at least competent and you can play him in different ways (yes, not on the level of DA:O), brings back a lot of characters from DA:O...
Sure, the tone in DA:I there shifted somewhat from the dark fantasy to a more neutral tone, but that alone shouldnt be enough to automatically dismiss it.
I get what you are saying and I agree with some of your points, but I do think tone is a larger aspect than you might initially think.
Just look at Avowed, everyone was hyped about that with that first trailer, but when it finally got closer to release and what they were showing had a notably different tone to that initial trailer interest dipped dramatically. That is for an, at the time, unreleased game with no comparable games in the same universe (yes POE and POE 2 but they are a different style of game), so imagine how much that is amplified when you do that to an existing franchise with comparable games. Yeah I think it does make quite a large difference.
The next thing for me is that personally it felt like I was playing a single player MMO half the time, which is a massive turn off for me.
Having said all of this, I'm not here saying DA2 was a great game like DA1, but I personally think it was a reasonably good game, and that was enough. DAI, again from me personally, while not a bad game like veilguard, stripped away a lot of what I liked about DA so I think 2 is better, but that is obviously debatable since a lot of people do like it.
I get what you are saying and I agree with some of your points, but I do think tone is a larger aspect that you might initially think.
I dont disagree with you on that, but many of the comments I am seeing are not placing much emphasis on the tone change in my opinion, so that's why I am not considering it as much of a genuine point if I were to accept 'tone change' being the main argument for the hate of DAI. But sure.
I also didnt particularly like it not being as dark as DA:O, but I accepted it, because that is what you ultimately have to end up doing, if you scope out this much into focus on different zones, races, and ultimately different story. Darkspawn are no longer the big main threat after all.
I just don't feel like the tone change can warrant this much dislike. That's all.
Oh for sure and I'm not saying it is, I'm just saying that it is a factor, which is then compounded by other things. But people often try to minimise the effect of changes like that, when it really does make a big difference.
Anecdotal example, but I have played multiple games in genres I don't usually like simply based on the premise and overall tone.
I dont think you have played either of them if that is what you think. DA2 is genuinely a terribly made game that is held up by above average writing. DA2 makes launch Cyberpunk look like a polished game
2 and Inquisition were enshittified by EA's pressure. Imagine DA2 with proper development time, and Inquisition without it's pointless open world and fetch quests.
2 is a great game with a lot of flaws. It still feels like part of the same universe in tone and writing as origins. Inquisition is just a bloated, boring piece of shit. 30 hour game stretched over 100 hours.
I played it last year and couldn't even finish it, janky, dated and just didnt hit the same and didn't enjoy it, skipped to DA2 and reminded myself why i love it despite its issues.
Yeah and that is fair enough, games age and times change so that can make going back feel more difficult, but honestly for me it is still a great game even today but you do have to go in knowing that it isn't going to control how you would like or look like a modern game and it's not going to have a lot of the QoL features that have became ubiquitous over time.
I'm personally not against a game having a bit of friction, in fact most of my favourite games of all time intentionally do so, but I can understand why some people would not like that and decide that they don't want to play games like that.
I just can't handle too much jank to em, age isn't always the issue, theres probably mods and stuff to make DAO run better on pc but i never looked into it, same year as og MW2, L4D2, AC2 and arkham asylum, most of which I've played in the last couple year and do think hold up well despite being 17 years old which definitely doesnt make me feel like an old man or anything...
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u/pirate135246 i9-10900kf | RTX 3080 ti 8h ago
It’s not the same people that made any of their great games. Good riddance to the slop they had become.