Dragon Age: Inquisition

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I've seen the Quan Chi one, and I agree it's better. As for old rpgs, I've played other rpgs before Origins, but Baldur's Gate wasn't among them. I don't pay much attention to people going on about how good things were in their gaming day though. It's based off of a logic that says something can't be good on its own merits, rather than having to compare to something else.
 
I don't pay much attention to people going on about how good things were in their gaming day though. It's based off of a logic that says something can't be good on its own merits, rather than having to compare to something else.
Dragon Age Origins was marketed as spiritual successor to BG2. So it's not THAT odd to compare them, especially for people who have certain expectations based on that marketing, you know.

It's the same with Witcher 3. People who like Witcher 1/2 have certain expectations for Witcher 3. Of course it can be good in its own right, but people will always compare Witcher 3 to its predecessors. That's pretty obvious in the same game franchise and in the same genre as well. Also it's pretty obvious that without a certain experience you're unable to give "proper" feedback on a game. If you have only played ONE game in your whole life you're pretty incompetent to decide whether the story is any good or not. Your knowledge grows with your experiences (which is pretty much the core design of wisdom...). You dimiss my opinion which is based on experiences I've made with BG2 although you admit that you never played the game - a game which was said by Bioware themselves to be the spritiual predecessor of DA Origins. I dare to say that you can't even understand my expectations for Origins if you didn't experienced BG2 yourself. You can't understand why I'm disappointed with the game based on certain marketing building on that experience if you don't have the same experience. We are on two different levels here (without rating). With different expectations, experiences and opinios two critics will never see a game in the very same way, that's just natural. What person one calls good storytelling for example isn't necessarily applying to person two who had different experiences in the past.

I think you make it yourself too easy. I never said that I hated Origins or that I thought it was a bad game. But I think the game doesn't use its potential and I also think that its marketing was crappy because the game doesn't deliver on its promises. That's even truer for Dragon Age 2 as many people might agree on.
 
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Posts have been deleted. Stop trading insults, please. If you can't argue without breaking forum rules, then don't.
 
I edited out the "offensive" parts.

WRONG. Go back in the thread. My reasons for disliking DA 2, are that the characters were either too selfish or too stupid, the gameplay was changed in favor of action, the story was all over the place, Anders, lol, the areas were often recycled, the conclusion was forced, and so on and so on.

Every time I've criticized DA 2, It's come with more of a reason than "I don't know why this game is liked by people. I don't like it. Maybe it's because you guys only played DA 2 and never played the original."

I dismiss your opinion because it has nothing to do with your actual criticisms of the game. Yea, I never played Baldur's Gate. And? That's one game. I like other games more than Origins. I like Witcher more than origins. Doesn't stop me from thinking either of them is a good game.

And since the latest post was removed, no need for me to comment on it more than saying again that I played Wasteland, which Fallout was the spiritual successor of, and it doesn't at all stop me from loving the Fallout series, even though the new ones are nothing like Wasteland.
 
And since the latest post was removed, no need for me to comment on it more than saying again that I played Wasteland, which Fallout was the spiritual successor of, and it doesn't at all stop me from loving the Fallout series, even though the new ones are nothing like Wasteland.
Nobody denied that possibility, especially not me. I just said that we have different experiences and that on that basis we probably have different expectations (additional to personal taste and stuff). The experiences you make form your opinions and expectations. Of course you can still like Fallout 3 after playing the first two games. Why not? But you really want to deny that you have a different level of experience with someone who hasn't played a Fallout or Wasteland game before?

I've said that I think Dragon Age Origins is a nice game, so I don't really see your point anyway. I just think that a huge potential was wasted and that the game doesn't deliver on some promises/marketing made by Bioware upfront. And these promises/marekting were directly tied to Baldurs Gate so there is probably indeed a difference of how we experienced and see Origins. As humans beings we are never "free of bias" anyway. We're completely unable to state objective critique. Critique in video gaming is always a sum of our personal tastes, experiences and finally expectations. When somebody states that "the story is bad" this is never a solid, objective statement. It's just something that is based on the critics experiences.

And I don't know what is wrong with my observation that DA Origins is especially liked by people who hasn't played CRPGs before. That's nothing special, it's just human. And I don't claim that it's true for each and everyone neither. Of course there can be people who played BG2 and still love Origins, even more than BG. Why not? But that doesn't mean that I can't share my personal observations...
 
I honestly don't know why you all praise Origins that much. I just replayed the whole game and it's nice but nothing special.

I have been playing Origins for the first time ever this past week and I am enjoying it a lot. To me the storyline has been interested and engaging, and the major npcs are interesting and I feel an emotional connection with them, much like the ones in the Witcher. And If I enjoy a game, then it would make sense to praise it. I think you have to understand here that just because you don't enjoy Origins or consider it special doesn't mean other people won't feel differently. Sometimes it just comes down a difference in what we enjoy. What you consider to be badly written, wooden characters are obviously not what I would consider badly written, wooden characters. It's not that one of us is wrong, it's just we have different tastes and I really don't see why there is a problem with that.

I also find it a little... strange that you assume that if people like Dragon Age Origins it's because they have low expectations or haven't played anything you consider better. While that may be true, it's also possible that this isn't the case, and some of us find that Origins speaks to us more than it does to you.
 
I made the statement I made based on the comment about Origins' characters. It doesn't matter what you've played before, doesn't matter what your experiences are, a good character is a good character. If you don't agree, that's fine. But someone's liking of a character has nothing to do with what games they've played before. I like characters on Skyrim, and they're some of the most shallow poorly written characters in gaming, minus a handful of them, because of the scale of the game.

I didn't say anyone was free of bias, that they couldn't compare games, etc etc. I said that overall, biases should not be the main contributor as to why someone says what they do about something. That is exactly why people strive to avoid letting their biases influence what they say in the first place.

And that's the main reason I ignored the original comment about not understanding why we liked something you didn't because possibly due to your experiences. Because there's nothing there to discuss.

I have been playing Origins for the first time ever this past week and I am enjoying it a lot. To me the storyline has been interested and engaging, and the major npcs are interesting and I feel an emotional connection with them, much like the ones in the Witcher. And If I enjoy a game, then it would make sense to praise it. I think you have to understand here that just because you don't enjoy Origins or consider it special doesn't mean other people won't feel differently. Sometimes it just comes down a difference in what we enjoy. What you consider to be badly written, wooden characters are obviously not what I would consider badly written, wooden characters. It's not that one of us is wrong, it's just we have different tastes and I really don't see why there is a problem with that.

I also find it a little... strange that you assume that if people like Dragon Age Origins it's because they have low expectations or haven't played anything you consider better. While that may be true, it's also possible that this isn't the case, and some of us find that Origins speaks to us more than it does to you.
You bring up a good point, that being emotional engagement. Witcher's characters to me are for the most part better written than that of origins, but Origins does a much better job (to me) of making me feel like a friend of theirs, like we're a family. I care more about these characters than the majority of Witcher's, and that's just due to the nature of Dragon age. You constantly fight side by side with them, you choose who to bring, they constantly talk as they share your experiences, and you help them out on deep levels with their special missions and progress increasing that bond over the length of the story. That for me is what makes Origins' story good in the first place despite the rather simplistic concept looming in the background.

It's another example of why I say you need to leave biases out of things and first look at a game on its own merits.

edit: Well, I should say I "cared" past tense, about the characters more. Now, DA has left me jaded.
 
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It doesn't matter what you've played before, doesn't matter what your experiences are, a good character is a good character. If you don't agree, that's fine. But someone's liking of a character has nothing to do with what games they've played before.
Let's just say that I disagree very much on that point. I think you're completely wrong here.

It doesn't matter what you've played before, doesn't matter what your experiences are, a good character is a good character. If you don't agree, that's fine.
That sentence is a violation of human logic and the basic concept of knowledge. Everything we experience and perceive is constantly checked against our previous experiences. That's how human knowledge and the way we perceive our world works. Most of what we experience is only that what we want to see and what we are used to see (what our brain constructed for us to see). There is little to no absolute truth to what we as human experience or perceive. So no, it's not irrelevant what I've played before, it's very relevant. It decides or at least influences how I play and judge on everything I'll play after that.

I have been playing Origins for the first time ever this past week and I am enjoying it a lot. To me the storyline has been interested and engaging, and the major npcs are interesting and I feel an emotional connection with them, much like the ones in the Witcher. And If I enjoy a game, then it would make sense to praise it. I think you have to understand here that just because you don't enjoy Origins or consider it special doesn't mean other people won't feel differently. Sometimes it just comes down a difference in what we enjoy. What you consider to be badly written, wooden characters are obviously not what I would consider badly written, wooden characters. It's not that one of us is wrong, it's just we have different tastes and I really don't see why there is a problem with that.
I said that the presentation was wooden, not the characters. But anyway, of course that's just my opinion I shared. And of course you're also wright that this isn't about right or wrong. Still I don't understand the praise for Origins from my point of view. It's pretty obvious that we disagree on some things about Origins and obviously many people disagree with me here. but while you say that this depends on taste @Unkindled claims that there is an objective way to speak about that and that the majority (or he himself) decided what a good character is for example. I tend much more to your conclusion of taste like I've said before but I add experiences (and therefore expectations) to that forumula. That's the reason why I supposed that many of the people who loved Origins haven't played BG2 at the time it was released. That's just my attempt to explain that obvious discrepancy in the perception of Origins based on the concept of taste and experiences.

I also find it a little... strange that you assume that if people like Dragon Age Origins it's because they have low expectations or haven't played anything you consider better. While that may be true, it's also possible that this isn't the case, and some of us find that Origins speaks to us more than it does to you.
Well, think of something (movie, book or game) that you find completely stupid with really horrible characters. Now imagine that the vast majority of people think that this thing is great with absolutely well written characters. Wouldn't you think of reasons why that could be so? Wouldn't you even considering the possiblity that you personally have higher expectations (and therefore possibly "standard") or that you've made different experiences in life and with the consumption of media than these other people? Of course that's an extreme example and doesn't apply in that extreme form on Origins but I think you get the picture.

If you really think that everything is based on taste than that's of course no issue for me. But imo experiences are important and they do play a certain role. Some things can be explained by just different tastes but other things (or part of the reason) can be explained by experiences and expectations.

I also don't think that what I've said about BG2 and Origins apply on everybody. You could have played BG2 and still adore Dragon Age. Observations and attempts of explaining a mass phenomen don't preclude individual reasons and individual reasons. ;)
 
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You bring up a good point, that being emotional engagement. Witcher's characters to me are for the most part better written than that of origins, but Origins does a much better job (to me) of making me feel like a friend of theirs, like we're a family. I care more about these characters than the majority of Witcher's, and that's just due to the nature of Dragon age. You constantly fight side by side with them, you choose who to bring, they constantly talk as they share your experiences, and you help them out on deep levels with their special missions and progress increasing that bond over the length of the story. That for me is what makes Origins' story good in the first place despite the rather simplistic concept looming in the background.

I also agree with this. I think obviously in the Witcher, Geralt is only close with a very select few people, and even those relationships have issues because of memory loss among other things, so there isn't much of a sense of fellowship or friendship between Geralt and the other characters. With Iorveth I felt as though it was slightly better, as he does treat you like a friend by the end of the game, but generally with the other characters I felt as though that feeling was lacking. With some characters that distance is understandable, but I certainly felt no emotional connections towards Dandelion during the Witcher 2, or even particularly towards Triss, which is something I hope changes in 3.

Sometimes even the relationships between npcs in Origins felt more complex than the 'relationships' I had with npcs in the Witcher 2.
 
I think fellowship is a trick to make you believing that your companions are "complex" characters. But in fact in a story that is amost entirely about you as the hero with almost no interaction between other NPCs it's hard to let that slip. In Mass Effect Bioware at least managed to keep the illusion by the really well done (emotional) storytelling. Credits must go to presentation and writers since they really let you feel like you are important and since they let you feel like you (or your ingame character) have an emotional connection to your companions. They let you forget that this actually isn't true since the only job of your companions is to make feel you important. Their job is to boster the main character and not to be complex characters in their own right. They don't have a real life apart from helping you with yours. They don't have a (believable) agenda or feelings other than liking or hating you. As I said while Bioware imo managed to let you forget all that in Mass Effect they didn't achieve the same level of illusion in Dragon Age Origins. Some small companion quests are not enough to give them the label "complex and well written characters" imo.

The very difference to Witcher 2 is that your companions (or better called NPCs which is immediately a sign that they exist for their own right...) have an own life, an own agenda, own believings and so on. They are not just there to make your life easier and to be used in combat. NPCs like Dandelion or Triss in Witcher 2 are realistic, complex characters (at least compared to DA Origins or even other games). They are not exclusively made to boster and support the main character. Of course the Witcher games have the huge benefit that they can build on a solid literary basis - a luxury Dragon Age doesn't have. I don't know whether it's a goal you should want to achieve to make each and every companion likable and create them in a way to make it easy for the gamers to "emotionally engage" with them. The emotional engagement should first and foremost arise from well written and complex characters and their interaction with you and their environment imo. That's the reason why Sapkowski's books are emotionally engaging, way more so than any game I know, Witcher games included. There is a realistic tension between characters based on complex interactions and human behaviours, something that almost isn't apparent at all in Dragon Age (of course it's "just" a game and it's quite hard to make that possible in games). CDPR at least tries with the Witcher games to not go the cheap and easy way but to go the long, but ultimately more fulfilling way of storytelling. But of course it's also a bit of a different genre, so hard to compare it that easily, I admit...

And of course that's just MY opinion (before someone complains again)... ;)
 
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Let's just say that I disagree very much on that point. I think you're completely wrong here.


That sentence is a violation of human logic and the basic concept of knowledge. Everything we experience and perceive is constantly checked against our previous experiences. That's how human knowledge and the way we perceive our world works. Most of what we experience is only that what we want to see and what we are used to see (what our brain constructed for us to see). There is little to no absolute truth to what we as human experience or perceive. So no, it's not irrelevant what I've played before, it's very relevant. It decides or at least influences how I play and judge on everything I'll play after that.
I guess I'm a walking talking anomaly then, because I find it rather easy to separate my past gaming experiences from whatever game I'm currently playing enough that it doesn't influence my tastes completely.
. It's pretty obvious that we disagree on some things about Origins and obviously many people disagree with me here. but while you say that this depends on taste @Unkindled claims that there is an objective way to speak about that and that the majority (or he himself) decided what a good character is for example.

Oh for Christ's sake,


Agreed. Not much more for me to say than that. Whether people think they're good or not, and I think most here would agree they were in Origins, one can still tell the difference between Origins characters and Dragon Age 2's.

I agreed with her original statement, then said regardless of your tastes, you should still be able to tell the difference between Origin's characters and DA 2's.

And to this edited quote of yours:

You mean the DA Origins trailers in which the main character had this certain look that was impossible to create with the ingame character editor? Yes, GREAT trailers. They just had nothing to do with the game itself at all...

Yea, I'm well aware of this, as you clearly see here, posted a good bit before your statement:

All of them piss me off because they always have this bullshit stuff with the eyes that's never in the game, lol. I know this sounds kiddy, but fuck it, part of playing games is that you can see and do cool shit. So, I thought that blue glowing eye stuff was sick, and that's nowhere in the game. Same for the armor until I finally realized the dlc I was avoiding came with that armor on the trailer. Too bad the shit was super bulky and ugly looking in comparison to the trailer's. But whatever, Origins was cool.

Then DA 2 did the same shit but red, along with this bullshit spell where he rips the arishok apart. NOT IN THE FUCKING GAME. Why bother making a trailer if it's shit not even in the fucking game? Blow me, Bioware. Long and hard.

edit: At least it wasn't as bad as Assassin's Creed 3:

[video=youtube;-pUhraVG7Ow]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pUhraVG7Ow[/video]

All of this, all this fighting through the crowds n' shit...
NOT IN THE MOTHER FUCKING GAME! Not once. You just sit and order people to shoot cannons n' shit during the big battles... Fuck, this game blew soooo hard.

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Oh yea, and when DA 2 showed Hawke fighting Arishok amongst other fighting soldiers in the warring city... more bullshit. The actual showdown was much less satisfying and epic. Lame lame lame. Fuck those trailers.
 
I guess I'm a walking talking anomaly then, because I find it rather easy to separate my past gaming experiences from whatever game I'm currently playing enough that it doesn't influence my tastes completely.
No, you just can't do so. Even if you want to and even if you think you're able to do so it's impossible. One cannot leave his human nature, I'm sorry.

I also never claimed that past gaming experiences do influence tastes "completely". I said that they play an important role.

But you do know that "taste" as the concept of what we like or dislike is also entirely based on previous experiences in our life? No baby is born with a premade taste. Taste is the entirety of experiences we have transformed into stuff we might like or not. So it's pretty strange that you think that your gaming experiences in particular don't have any influence on your taste. That's like saying that you can define a "good steak" without every having experienced a bad one. The more we know about steakes and how they taste the more we can tell about them. Without previous knowledge or experience our opinion doesn't have much weight or substance after all ;)
 
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I also never claimed that past gaming experiences do influence tastes "completely". I said that they play an important role.
No, you just can't do so. Even if you want to and even if you think you're able to do so it's impossible. One cannot leave his human nature, I'm sorry.

And that last part was in response to a post where I say:

I guess I'm a walking talking anomaly then, because I find it rather easy to separate my past gaming experiences from whatever game I'm currently playing enough that it doesn't influence my tastes completely.

So if you don't think past experiences affect taste completely, why did you just tell me it's impossible to separate from past experiences enough that it wouldn't effect my tastes completely?

:hmm:
 
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So if you don't think past experiences affect taste completely, why did you just tell me it's impossible to separate from past experiences enough that it wouldn't effect my tastes completely?
:
Reading lesseon number one: read carefully.
Reading lesseon number two: understand.

I guess I'm a walking talking anomaly then, because I find it rather easy to separate my past GAMING experiences from whatever game I'm currently playing enough that it doesn't influence my tastes completely.
I also never claimed that past GAMING experiences do influence tastes "completely". I said that they play an important role.
No, you just can't do so. Even if you want to and even if you think you're able to do so it's impossible. One cannot leave his human nature, I'm sorry.
(Nowhere in this last quote I claimed that GAMING experiences are the one and only experience you have that influences your tastes...)



Your taste is based on all kinds of experiences, experiences with other games only a fraction of it. The point is that these gaming experiences always have SOME influence on how you perceive a new game. It makes not sense claiming that gaming is a matter of taste and claiming at the same time that you are "free of bias" and previous experiences with other games. That's irrational. ;)
 
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Reading lesseon number one: read carefully.




Your taste is based on all kinds of experiences, experiences with other games only a fraction of it. The point is that these gaming experiences always have SOME influence on how you perceive a new game. It makes not sense claiming that gaming is a matter of taste and claiming at the same time that you are "free of bias" and previous experiences with other games. That's irrational. ;)

Reading lesson number 1:

I didn't say anyone was free of bias, that they couldn't compare games, etc etc. I said that overall, biases should not be the main contributor as to why someone says what they do about something. That is exactly why people strive to avoid letting their biases influence what they say in the first place.

And I'm sorry, but your quotes still don't change the fact that you just said:

No, you just can't do so. Even if you want to and even if you think you're able to do so it's impossible. One cannot leave his human nature, I'm sorry.

You literally just contradicted yourself by saying it was impossible to separate experiences enough not to effect taste completely. Even if you didn't say this exactly, you just admitted to it by claiming what I said was impossible.
 
And whether you said gaming or not, it quite frankly doesn't matter. One can separate themselves from ANY past experiences enough that they won't let them influence their tastes totally.

edit: Also, your point is.. not there. You responded to a post where I say I can separate from gaming experiences enough not to influence tastes completely by saying it's impossible. You never differentiated from gaming and other experiences in that post. I was talking about games, and you said it was impossible.

So even if you DIDN'T mention gaming earlier, which you did because we were talking about you playing Baldur's Gate and that influencing your look on Origins, you still just said it was impossible when you responded to my quote.
 
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You literally just contradicted yourself by saying it was impossible to separate experiences enough not to effect taste completely. Even if you didn't say this exactly, you just admitted to it by claiming what I said was impossible.
Ahem, no. You seem to interpret my statements in a way I never said or meant it.

Our human experience is a collection of all the experience we've made in our lifes and each one of them affects us somehow, no matter if we want that or not. Every experience we make is part of our subconsciousness and the collections of these experiences decides how we feel and act.

The point is that our past gaming experiences are part of this collection. When we play a new game these past gaming experiences influence how we perceive and interpret the new game, no matter if we want so or not. At the same time every other experience we've made in our lives influences that as well (and on top our current cognitive and emotional state the moment we play the game). So no, gaming experiences don't influence the way we play and perceive games completely but partially. Our whole collection of experiences form our taste so past gaming experiences also influence our taste, but again not completely but partially. There is absolutely no contradiction in what I've said tbh...

And whether you said gaming or not, it quite frankly doesn't matter. One can separate themselves from ANY past experiences enough that they won't let them influence their tastes totally.
It matters a lot. The issue is that you CAN'T seperate yourself from any past experience because it's also part of your subconsciousness which you can't control. That's how the human brain works. Even if you think you can "forget" stuff you can't. "It has already made up your mind." But you're right: past gaming experiences don't influence your tastes completely. All your experiences do, games only one of them. That's exactly my point. But that also means that you can't play new games "unbiased".
 
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I'm not going to repeat myself, I think I've given my viewpoint enough, and I'd just end up quoting a bunch of posts right now anyway. Moving on.
 
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