Yes there are some major flaws in Mass Effect 2, some that left me scratching my head, but at the end of the day Mass Effect 2 was the most epic game i've ever played, railroading and all.

Bethesda's stock isn't public, is it?

Nope. Zenimax (which owns Bethesda Softworks which owns Bethesda Game Studios) is a private company.

Bioware's game quality has been very hit and miss for years. Their latest effort (SWTOR) seem to me to be little more than WoW with lightsabres.

it doesn't have many meaningful decisions or interlinking factions, and does indeed lack good stories, but it DOED have a [censored] load of dialogue,60000 lines I believe.

Skyrim sets are bar for gameplay, that's for sure, but Bioware beats the living snot out of Bethesda when it comes to storytelling. Skyrim really just railroads you through the entire experience, and rarely ever gives you any choices of how to conduct yourself. Fallout 3 did a much better job of that, and I find it sad that Bethesda didn't keep all the good from that game.

The only way to be "good" in Skyrim is to simply ignore all the evil factions and quests, of which there is a huge abundance. I miss moments like in Fallout 3 where someone goes "Hey, why don't you nuke this town?" and I go "Hey, what does this shotgun barrel taste like?"

Parthunaax has a few lines and about five questions I can ask him. In Fallout New Vegas Ceasar whi is only one of maybe 4-5 faction leaders has loads of questions and like 20 min of dialogue.

OMS. So you are saying: 'http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1776285'??? Oof.


That was one of the really unique missions in the game ... But yeah, I have no idea what the dude giving the speech said.
I think we can agree Skyrim's dialogue and character interaction is serviceable, barely. But DA2's dialogue ... urgh. I think I liked one character, Fenris, and that's almost entirely just because we have the same accent.

I also forgot to reply to this ...


Combat mechanics were fine, except that the animations were OTT and unrealistic, and the context in which the combat mechanics existed- trash mobs, trash environments, trash set-ups- pretty much drowned the only thing that stands out about DA2 as 'above okay'.


Bioware don't have it in them, anymore. Let go of the dream, oh hopeful one.

Shame, I wrote that when I was tired, hadn't long woke up but wanted to reply to your surpising reply, mostly surpised because you will actually admit unlike most that Skyrim has many flaws. Does raise the question though, do you play Skyrim after taking painkillers or shortly before?

I don't feel when posting on a forum for a game my standards of writing should need to be so high, certainly no higher then those who get paid to do it in the game you feel has better writing. Maybe it's laziness, but to me spending time to write an essay out in word editing it is insanity, some people do it and those tend to suffer then for lack of real time replies being so behind the topic. It's a forum, I write how I would talk but am held back by not the best english, but I have returned to a night course to try correct, we weren't all given the same starts or reflexes or perfectly not wasting away muscles and nerves in our hands.


Yes, Bethesda does provide more freedom in many aspects, you can be a dual weilding marogue with 2 axes if your want, but what you can't be is a master of merchantile without praying to a god and recieving thier stars blessing but these are the types of rpg they are, one freedom in class and one maintaining a sense of lore to the game where your born with it or not. You can be male or female and everyone in the world will remain a set gender, but to use the brother thing against it is padantic, you berated it for the dire lack of choice and how NO choice has any meaning, yet when choosing your gender and class and it matches the history of your family to suit that, with long lasting impacts on the game such as who lives and who dies and whos around to have certain things happen to them depending on your actions again, which are real meaningful choices, no you can't pick the gender of your sibling but it is a reflection of yours.

I will also admit I felt little to no attachment to the brother, he came across as a meat head to me, but even that doesn't deserve to be written off as "the emotional maturity of a 14 year old" It's no worse then all the males of one species having identical personalitys as do the females, frequently with the same voice it's different personalities in game and to be honest how anyone could claim a characters dealing with the topic of sixual abuse, physical abuse. psychological abuse (alot of abuse) and loss of many loved ones as emotionally immature, or even the revenge isn't handled in an immature way. I didn't feel particularly linked to the mother even but I did feel for the loss of Hawke, maybe that's the real problem, reading between the lines, empathy and maybe rather then RP it's more watching Hawke's story that you do effect though.

What real bothers me about this is not really your opinion vs. mine but the blatant blindness to the problems this game has, the flaws of bethesda, vs the nitpicking of every minor detail of that one and frequently where they both match it's only a terrible thing in the one. To go as far as saying the bar has been set by Skyrim, which is to imply its standards are high, when no feature is that well off, aside from standing on top of a mountain and looking over this world you can explore what you see it's no better then anything that has been done and brings nothing new to the formula, it's too far. Even Kirkwalls three tiers are more believable and different then white runs, when you see the elf slums you don't think it looks no different like in windhelm. What little there was in DA was done well and mostly to a decent standard, courtship and same six marriage wasn't just clumsily tossed in, a empty shallow feature, it was tastefully done, as they set out to do "unless we can do it properly we won't do it at all" springs to mind. The touching dialogue at the end as you go into battle will always be infinately better then "Let's go kill a dragon" "Whatever you want".

Let's take a sample of the game, one that you would expect to be of a higher quality for impact and not having the deadline looming near by.

Bioware has been relegated to making linear action games.

Yeah EA didn't scrap ME1 and DA:Origins because they were too far into developement when they bought Bioware but their games after this point are steamlined for mass market and even if they are commercial success (not even for DA2 it seems) quality is rolling down the hill.

EDIT : i mean, too bad, because DA : Origin was really really on the track of the BG saga.

DA:Origins while much better than DA2 was already heavily mmo'ified - it pretty much had the lame tank/dps/healer setup.

EDIT: I personally thought the NWN franchise was better and more true to the BG series (especially NWN2 which isn't even a Bioware game.... actually wasn't it made by the same studio as Skyrim?).

Definitely.

I have had trouble with the slow rate a patch updates by steam. This seems to be an issue when the patch first arrives ( I assume because of traffic) Why cant they stagger the update. I have bought the game, the question is do own it or have I just payed for the privilege to use the game how Bethesda and steam see fit. My main concern is what is going to happen to all these games when steam or any company that forces you to use steam for their games goes belly up. Will my entire game collection go belly up. If you go on to steam they seem to be coming more and more desperate to sell you something. My thoughts are that when companies do this they are in financial trouble, this may not be the case but if it was and they closed their doors tomorrow what would happen. Of more of a concern what would happen if steam did and the publisher or your favorite game had already closed its doors.

Sorry this was meant for another thread.

Didn't like the NWNs, storytelling was subpar, characters were so predictable and lacked depth, engine was meh ... that is just my taste but i felt they lacked "soul" (just like any Black Isle/Troika game since they founded Obsidian Entertainment).

Well at least you could make choices that formed your character and had an impact on the story.

Not to mention the MMO-style row of buttons along the bottom of the screen. At the time DA:O came out I was playing a lot of WoW. And I was amazed at how similar WoW and DA:O played. I could easily hop from one game to the other and back.




I think you're confusing Skyrim with FO:NV. Obsidian made FO:NV and NWN 2. Bethesda made Skyrim.

NWN had the really bad single player campaign ... I haven't played either of these but, from what I've heard, that's where Bioware's decline began. (BG2 might have foreshadowed it with its reuse of assets, but was still a brilliant game despite this.)

And actually, IIRC, NWN2 was done by the same people that did FO:NV. That's Obsidian, not Bethesda.


Skyrim is not this bad. You can call it bland, but you can't call it bad. DA2, OTOH, is actively atrocious. It's like David Gaider and co. were trolling.

Maybe that's the difference between people who like DA2 and people who don't- the latter would prefer to play vanilla games to irritating ones; whereas the former appreciate whatever stimulation they get, even if that stimulation comes in the form of Battlefield Earth-esque (lack of) quality.


Like I said, I really don't care how you write, I just couldn't be bothered to reply, earlier. Somewhere I found the energy to skim this post, though. (Seriously, I'm not critiquing you- just telling you why I didn't reply.)


This, I'm not touching. I've had too many of these discussions, and I don't want to take another walk down Perdition Road. Let's just say that your idea of 'meaningful choice' and my idea of 'meaningful choice' are different and leave it at that.


You'll have noticed that RPGs in general have taken a nosedive over the past decade. Deus Ex, The Witcher 2, Alpha Protocol and Skyrim are the games that have come closest to addressing this problem, but the one of these that has been the most successful is Skyrim. Ergo, Skyrim's set the new bar for RPGs.
Even if I did include recent Bioware games (and I wouldn't), they wouldn't define the genre in popular culture, because they haven't sold much.


... I don't think I can take you seriously. And I was looking forward to a level-headed discussion on this topic ...

I have to disagree, RPG's have always had that that's where mmorpgs got it from in the first place.

What I meant by mmo'ification is the implentation of more strict roles and the concept of threat which is a MMO thing, I find the whole notion of threat an abomination and unrealistic even for a fantasy setting. I mean I can buy taunting but innate threat I can't it's an insult to the NPC's intelligence.


You are right.


The original NWN campaign wasn't that good, the first expansion was TOO RP-like (you were constantly being rated for even your minor actions) the second expansion was pretty good.

NWN2 was excelent and on par with the older games in my book.

Aside from the one guy drawing in customers there is no life or suffering, it just feels like a very deserted by no worse for wear part of the city, there is the small area of wooden "luxury" homes which contrasts it but frankly they stand out more, I'd believe quicker the dark elves are in terrible living conditions much worse then anyone else if the small area behind a graveyard was filled with shacks and small inns. Not buildlings that part of the city and no more worn by the harsh weather conditions then the palace of the Jarl of the city. the insides nothing more then a lick of paint wouldn't fix maybe some sandpaper but surely thats up to the person living there, like it's your job and at your cost to clean up a murder scene. You enter the slums of kirkwall down those steps in a very seperate feeling part of the town, not by a wall or loading screen but by it being sunk and enclosed on itself, on entrance and exit, down cracked steps into a worn out part of the town, where theres people trying to sell small things or doing thier laundry outside, there is such life in that area and at the same time shows how poor these people are. No elf has the time to spend all day circling complaining about how awful these living condition are all day.

So you except that the bar you're setting by claiming Skyrim is the best is low, lower then many games that have come before it. I guess thats the real vital difference here then, I don't feel that should be praised, let alone rewarded. Mostly because if it does become set by this the next game of the year will have lower standards and it will continue to drop. As much as I am arguing for DA:II here If it was used to suggest that it should get game of the year I'd quickly switch sides, I just feel it's got more right then wrong, sadly whats wrong is fairly major gameplay elements, the loss of tactics over endless waves of mobs that quickly become repetitive, the "dungeon" for all cave exploration and towards the end where there are better qualities of choices with higher effects and more story and side quests by the 3rd act they all vanish, but thats been a thing with games for decades where as they approach the end then end up needing to rush for release, the problem there is the production cycle was set far too short by EA in the first place after the length and breadth of DA:O they should have known to give more time for II. I still maintain as short as it was and even though I don't really want to replay it at all, Bastion was game of the year, it was new, brilliant, produced to a great standard and such a thouroughly enjoyable experience it was truly satisfying to play, not to mention the music. Still DA II provided me hours of entertainment and intrigue, more spent debating the actions of those within, rather then hours of frustratingly wrangling glitches and debating my right to complain as a consumer.

Fair enough, but would your idea of meaningful choice give you a option to say you haven't stolen anything in your life truthfully? Or when you bring two people together in a quest that isn't a misc one, they don't continue on with thier very seperate lives, nothing new to say, just the same old line of how bored she is?

I'm not ready to completely write off bioware yet, like as hard as I find it to get into skyrim now I don't want to write of Bethesda. Members of bioware have replied to various aspect of thier design desicion, even gone out on reviews saying they made a huge mistake with it. Hopefully they can reason with the EA bosses that forcing III into the same situation will lead to a loss of money. But only time will tell if they are being Lionhead or truthful in the bashing of the "awesome" game they just released. Then again if they completely drop making dlc's before finishing the stories they started I will drop them, I'd rather not waste my time on playing a game with huge lose ends again, lionhead done it time and time again, even given us in the next game all these awesome events that happened in the gap, in text, now thats class trolling.

Its basically down to personal preference. By the way, I know there are glitches and issues with the game. There are things I wish Beth had done differently. However, in the grand scheme of things, there are fewer things I can not abide in Skyrim than in DA2. Hawke is Hawke, male or female doesn't make any real difference. Just like Skyrim. At least in Skyrim I can choose my companions, or no companions if I don't want them. I have no idea what you are talking about with Hadvar; of the two characters I've made so far, I have yet to choose the Stormcloaks. I always follow Hadvar once I get the chance. Kirkwall unchanging areas with the same npcs in place for ten years [not that you actually get to *play* all ten years] doesn't, to me, seem to be better than Whiterun, or even Riverwood. It could be just me, since I like the art direction of Skyrim much more than the hot rod samurai anime art direction of DA2. I could probably find the thread on EABioware's forum where people are pointing out the really low res "you aren't an important npc so we don't have to bother with what you look like" npcs. As far as the marriage/lover thing goes, I admit there is a lot more innuendo in DA2. Kind of hard to miss when one party member is fighting in a thong and high boots. But you end up with one character that seems to go after anything with a heartbeat, a naive character who serves as comic relief because she misses all the innuendo, one goth anime conflicted tormented type, and one holy paladin you can marry as long as you don't plan on consummating it, for possible partners. You end up with more dialogue, I guess, but not much else.

By the way, for those people complaining about proper punctuation, spelling, and/or grammar; don't bother, please. If a post so grieviously offends your sensibilities, please don't bother to reply. Perfect grammar, spelling, and punctuation aren't required to post here.

That's me. I didn't say they were. I thought Riven had good points and merited an explanation as to why I wasn't replying. Meant nothing by it. Noted, anyway.


Aesthetically, the two are totally different, yes. Skyrim focuses on realism (i.e. being as internally consistent as possible and modelling the world as closely as possible to RL) and DA2 focuses on fantasy (i.e. substituting realism for impact, wonder and interest). I don't mind the latter, but DA2 didn't approach this aspect well; in some spots there's realism, in others there isn't, and there's no clear direction as to when either approach will be taken. It just seems shoddy.

Windhelm is the way it is because that's what a town would look like, basically, in a really cold Medieval setting. And you're forgetting that Windhelm existed before the Dark Elves moved there. Why should where they live look any different than where everyone else lives? Most problems you have with the design of Skyrim's environments can be explained by (technological limitations of gaming platforms but also) in-game lore.

Kirkwall is as good as a lot of Skyrim cities. The difference is that Skyrim has more than a handful of them; while DA2 sticks you in this one not-well-crafted city for the entirety of the game, without the possibility of you venturing out to other places. If you're going to stick someone in one city for the entirety of a game, you absolutely have to make sure that city is as near perfect as you can get it. Insert special locations; insert interesting (especially non-party) characters; place city lore in different places; develop a social system that has more than two competing communities. DA2 didn't bother, and this is its downfall.

Skyrim doesn't manage much better, either, but at least it doesn't force you to be there if you don't want to be.


This isn't so much about what I think about the game- although, again, I think it's of better quality than any other RPG out there today. What I'm wondering is whether Skyrim has set the bar for developers for designing RPGs. And I think it has, regardless of whether that bar is lower or higher than previous RPGs.


I am. They've made it clear they never really wanted to make RPGs and were just forced into that role because of their first successes.
It's funny that you mention here that you were disappointed that Bethesda decided to jump, in-game, into the future without letting the fan base experience the changes in Tamriel.
Kind of like how DA2 jumps through all of the interesting parts of Hawke's story that would have allowed you to define your character, huh?

Ah, I've read the arguments for DA 2, so I again played the game today to see if I missed something.

It svcks just as much as, if not more than, the first time. I guess it's time to uninstall it, and put it on the shelf.

Awful game. There's no way around it, no way to explain the blatant re-use of areas, the stagnation in Kirkwall, the animations, the waves, the ninja drops, the crappy model renders, the insipidness that I cannot talk to party members when I wish.

Awful, just awful.

Back to writing, Skyrim, and TW 2.

Main reason I never picked up DA:O after I beat it the first time: Waaaay to much dialogue

I want to play a game, not have a half hour long conversation. I have things to do, I just want to play a game and do stuff. Let me slay dragons because I am unable to do that in real life. I can however talk to people in real life.


Fleshed out quests and meaningful decisions should be in every game, but especially in an RPG, I agree. There were a few of these in Fallout but really none in Skyrim. Every time I play Skyrim I like to choose different dialogue questions and actually it really does not matter what you say or do half the time.

DA2 was one step foreward, two steps back for me. The system for companion's opinion on the main character were better than DA Origins, and the Ability trees were superior.The conversation wheel and spoken dialogue was a hell of a lot better than the mute text choice of DA Origins. Both games suffer from a crappy loot system. But I thought DA Origins had the superior story, better combat despite the Ability tree flaws. And the repetitive terrain in DA 2 was absolutely horrible. The story wasn't super terrible but needed more and there are a lot of loose ends that DA 3 needs to address.

Bioware games definitely don't say JRPG's to me in the least. In any way. And Jade Empire....it was an rpg.

DA2 was nothing but recycled garbage and a poorly made shadow of it's predecessor throughout the entire game, I really liked the characters but that's it.

DA Origins IMO was better in nearly every way.