Dealspwn's editor bangs his head against the disappointing wall that is Dragon Age II and asks where it all went wrong...
'It’s Thursday, the weekend is within sight but just out of reach, the weather is bouncing between grim and optimistic and, having a cold, I’ve just sneezed all over my computer screen. On top of that, a development studio I thought would never let me down has wasted 30 hours of my life. Carl gave BioWare’s Dragon Age II a nice round seven in his review and, for the most part, it is a perfectly solid game. We arguably have to review what is in front of us, not what we want a game to be, but review criteria shifts as the landscape of gaming shifts. Judging the worth of a game is much like judging the worth of a legal case – opinions and reasoning are based on precedent.
Precedent suggests that BioWare could have (should have) done better, all fingers pointing to a scenario that suggests there was something of a sprint to the finish. We have been spoiled, in essence, by the surging splendour of the western RPG, helped in no small way by BioWare themselves. Games that offer choice and freedom, action and story, customisation and character.
God, Dragon Age II was a disappointment…'
Dragon Age 2 set the precedent that the series would always carry our choices over, but was it worth it?
If the choices won't matter, why bother? Bioware works so hard at giving meaningful choices but rarely if ever carrying out the impact of such choices to the end.
Immersed Gamer writes: "In order to replace the oppressive BioWare Points system, EA is making a large portion of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age DLC catalogs free for PC users.
For those of you blissfully unaware, EA and BioWare employed a payment system called BioWare Points on PC to pay for DLCs for titles like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. While PC gamers have been struggling with BioWare point’s unfair conversion rates and extremely scarce and cost-detrimental sales.
Console players have been allowed to purchase content in pieces through the appropriate Sony and Microsoft shops. For real money, and not BioWare monopoly bucks. In turn, console players missed out on some DLC content, such as Mass Effect 2 pre-order bonuses that have been repackaged into a DLC pack."
Great response to Ubisoft and their disgusting behavior. Ubisoft decide to take away DLC from people who paid for it, while EA give it for free to everyone when they realize their system sucks. Who would have thought that EA of all companies would be showing Ubisoft how it should be done (even if this is EA fixing their own mistakes as well).
What goes around comes around and I promise you, Ubisoft will see their actions blow back on them when their diminishing sales numbers and stock taking a hit downward. That's the only way a company learns when they decide to be reactive instead of proactive.
BLG writes: "There was a time that BioWare games were the biggest deal in gaming. The Canadian developer’s legacy of all-time classics is well known. Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, and Baldur’s Gate are some of the biggest names in gaming.
While BioWare’s quality has fallen off lately, there’s no denying the quality of titles in their portfolio. That’s why we’re going to dive in and rank every BioWare game from worst to best. By every, I do mean every BioWare game, even the ones you completely forgot about!"
Ranked from worse to even more worse more like, they been on free fall for a fair few years now and I personally don't think any of there earlier games have aged well
Wow to think at one point in their history they made a Sonic the Hedgehog game..crazy
Anthem is crazy underrated. I really enjoyed it. ME1 is Bioware's best imo
Replies(1)
I actually put quite a bit of hours into Anthem but i dont think its underrated. It was a huge mess, server issues, gameplay issues, crashes, no endgame loop, too few different enemies, uninteresting gear. too few dungeons.
It for sure had potential and if they could have managed to keep the same gameplay of the classes but without the rest of the issues, this game could have been huge, but in the state in which it launched it was such a letdown. They partly fixed some of the issues, but it took too long. A grinding game like this needs to hook players from day 1.
I've always been a very passionate fan of BioWare and have loved all their games. I think they, along with Bethesda, are the best in the rpg business as well as some of the best overall game makers in the world. But DA2 really let me down. I think pretty much all the points in this article are valid and I think the game was the first big blemish on an otherwise stellar track record that almost any other publisher should be envious of.
i agree some of those points are valid. the game overall lacked the scale and ambition of the original one. although the story of DA2 was very good (debatable) but the fact the first one was about saving the world and this one is generally about saving a city, doesnt quite cut it. I'm pretty sure Bioware wanted to set up a sequel thus the compromise. Dragon Age 2 was nevertheless worthy of its title, the gameplay was most definitely an improvement over the first and alot of sidequests (at the cost of the main quests?), loved every minute of it.
I'm 23 hours into DA2 and still waiting for it to really get going. What DA:O had was momentum there was a sense of urgency to the writing, DA2 is a good game and I look forward to playing it at the end of the day but it's let down by the blandness of Kirkwall, it's just not an interesting place.