Are they bonus quests worth the money then? I'm cheap, but if you guys recommend buying it, I'll just have to bust open the piggy bank. (I know it's probably something like $5, but I mean it when I say I'm cheap. :teeth
Their is more to Shale then getting the town and character. Shale is a fully fleshed out companion with a side quest and backstory. um...Warden's Keep. I couldn't complete all of the adventure. I messed up at one point, got a glitch, and something I needed to become shiny and click-able wasn't. The Warden's Armor was cool, and I had Oghren in that. You, also, get a party chest where you can store items in it. I think the party chest, alone, is worth the money.
You should have been given a code with your game purchase to unlock Shale & the associated quest.The US$15 is apparently for people who buy the game second-hand.pudi0072000 said:Are they bonus quests worth the money then? I'm cheap, but if you guys recommend buying it, I'll just have to bust open the piggy bank. (I know it's probably something like $5, but I mean it when I say I'm cheap. :teeth
Now this is something worthypudi0072000 said:
. Better than relapses of some members' disturbed Barbie encounters in their youth They did say that this option would be enhanced and not just a mini-game, but I really liked the cards and hope the art is still kept intact.
You're right. my thoughts exactly on that base.pudi0072000 said:
Got'ya.... But, this romance thing seems like an emotionless looped algorithm if you ask me. Sure the text is there, but the structure convinces me otherwise. It doesn't have that ooomf in it like The Witcher ( :-*)does where structure implies real scenarios. (I love the sarcasm)pudi0072000 said:
eace:Oh, I understand completely. Even though I am a big fan of BioWare (have been since Baldur's Gate 2), I prefer The Witcher's romance arcs (Shani and Triss) over BioWare's. Yet, I'm a completionist so I do everything that a game allows me to do, including romances. I just wish I didn't have to take a influence hit for the woman twice. Also, I found it kind of strange none of the companions realized that my character was a blood mage56236 said:Got'ya.... But, this romance thing seems like an emotionless looped algorithm if you ask me. Sure the text is there, but the structure convinces me otherwise. It doesn't have that ooomf in it like The Witcher ( :-*)does where structure implies real scenarios. (I love the sarcasm)
um...especially after ingesting blood from Alistair whenever my character was injured. . .that's love right? Just finished DA:O.. having played it for 80 hours. Great, great game. It felt more epic than the Witcher, to be honest. Much, much more epic.. especially the ending(although the gameplay in the end is TEDIOUS)But I still prefer the Witcher.. and not everything has to be epic. I tried the Witcher just now.. it felt SO weird to have the main character voiced. Just like it felt weird NOT to have him voiced in the beginning of DA:O.But well, yeah... I'd give the Witcher 9.4 (although now, after DA:O, the dialogue seemed pretty clunky after DAOs animations and movement while having conversations) and DA:O 9.0, perhaps.I also thought DA:O's word was too magical. I don't like seeing flashy magic swords (gaah.. if you want a good sword it'll be either lightning, in flames etc... and some of them are blue(the swords) and look just so very.. fantasy-ish and not real at all) or the flashy spell effects all the time.. breaks the immersion for me. I prefer the Witcher's style, the mages being very rare. I also prefer adventuring alone, as I've stated before.. but I think some kind of a balance between TW1's and DAO's style could be good. By that I mean going in quests alone 99% of the time but meeting more with friends (would be optional hopefully) in taverns and such.. so you could really get to "know" them..
I think I also found DA-O's world a bit to magical and fantasy-ish. It had just passed the thin line between believable & not believable.Realism? That's TW style. Though I think I'd give DA-O a solid 8 out of 10. For those of you who played DA-O, think you'll complain that TW2 may have borrowed some parts from it? It does happen sometimes. eace:
eace:No one makes games -- or writes books or makes music or paintings or any other art -- in a vacuum. It's good to be inspired by the best of what has come before; the key is to process that inspiration through your own psyche and come up with a variation on the theme, rather than just copying stuff exactly as it was.I think TW2 would be impoverished if the folks at CDPR bent over backwards not to be influenced by Dragon Age: Origins. They're gamers -- of course they're playing it. But they have their own style, and I'd love to see what the influences of DA look like once CDPR's Muse gets ahold of them.56236 said:For those of you who played DA-O, think you'll complain that TW2 may have borrowed some parts from it? It does happen sometimes.
If there's one thing I want to see copied from Bioware games, it's not from DA:OFacial expressions from Mass Effect series.Really .. being able to make your customised Shepard and then still have all those expressions ..Of course they had to take a few shortcuts and only have 2 voicesets, but hey .. your character actually talks!!In contrast, Dragon Age's PC comes across so .. wooden.I may think Dragon Age's pacing & level design makes a better game than Mass Effect, but hey .. it's newer.I'm just hoping they actually design Mass Effect 2's control scheme for PC rather than being a half assed port from consoles.
Everyone borrows off everyone these days. I won't be upset if CDPR borrow some ideas from DA:O, so long as these ideas are actually relevant to The Witcher world and not just some gimmick. I trust CDPR, they love The Witcher, so I know they'll do the right thing.
After all the 9.5s out there from crappy reviewers, finally there are a couple of DA:O reviews I can recommend reading.Eurogamergives Dragon Age: Origins (PC) 8/10 and Dragon Age: Origins (X360) 6/10These guys actually listed a bunch of pros and cons, rather than just its praises through hype/nostalgia coloured glasses.I'd post a link, but I read 'em awhile ago, and google is easy anyway.
Well, all reviews are a matter of opinion.However, they are so far the only reviewers that point out any flaws.And this game has many.Also, X360 is relevant 'cos a lot of people don't have PCs capable of running DA:O, so they'd get the xbox version.My friend did so, and it's .. not good.On the subject of fantastical, the reviewer probably meant it's all rehashed stuff.Look, undead. Dungeons. Demons. Evil Mages. Magic swords and fireballs.As in, there's no "WHOA that's awesome!" reaction that's meant to be inspired by the genre.I like the game, I do.But it's no Baldur's Gate ..I mean what's the point of grey wardens anyway?Neither you nor alistair seem any more capable of dealing with darkspawn than anyone else, and killing the big bad is pretty much the whole plot.So despite it's epicness, it comes across a little shallow.Baldur's Gate series and Planescape: Torment are all time bioware favourites, and why?Those games challenge your perspectives on the nature of life, and asks huge questions of why and how, and ultimately when the player makes their choices they're finding out about who THEY are.Whether players get the issues or not, they don't forget that shit.There's no meaning in DA:O's choices, "both is equally retarded" is a common complaint.Just sayin'
You bet I'd agree. Talk about realism. :Dezired said:
I think it's almost unanimous that members agree "it's good" to borrow certain elements from other games. But, I'd rather the others be unsuccessful games, and the borrowedelement not cause too much negative attention when noticed, but rather heralded for its success.So, "why re-invent the wheel?".... maybe these sort of things speed-up the development process? Or maybe they divide successes from the rest. Anyways, it helps somehow. eace:I only read the conclusion. So what cons did the reviewer list?The game is supposed to have all the fantasy genre normal stuff.. that's the point of it. It's not trying to re-invent the wheel. It gives what the fantasy lovers want and what they expect. That's why it has elves, dwarfs, undead... instead of pink lollipops dancing in the starry sky. So it's like blaming CoD for being a first person shooter...So you haven't finished the game, yet you say there is no point to Grey Wardens? Or is that a honest question? If so, I can answer you and there DEFINITELY IS a reason why Grey Wardens are needed. A blight cannot be ended without a Grey Warden. So it's not shallow...Can you give any examples of choices that are "equally retarded"? Perhaps ones that can't be found in BG or PST?Tlazolteotl said:
This is like ... spoiler territory.You wanna hear my biggest complaint?The entire landsmeet thing annoyed the crap out of me.By that point I couldn't care less about the entire sorry lot of humans .. what I really wanted to do was let the blight eat them all.Conveniently have my army sitting on every road leading out.As Sun Tzu said, cornered men fight harder.Waltz in and mop up the sufficiently softened enemy.Probability wise, it has the highest chance of success, with the added bonus of wiping out a bunch of human nobles.The endgame that was forced on me was lamer than a bunch of cavalry saving the day in the nick of time.And the cavalry thing is really lame (sorry, Tolkien, you failed there too).But, on topic, I seemed to have conveniently come across the means to make more grey wardens near the end ...So I could only make one?That's Deus Ex Machina right there. Plot got broke and need a fix.I wanted to make 100 wardens overnight, 'cos that would also be smart.But no ... the entire grey warden thing is ridiculous.
Uhhh.. what? How could you make more Grey Wardens? And how is the Grey Warden thing ridiculous? First you claimed they're not even needed and when I said they are.. you drop that issue and proceed to another one that frankly doesn't make any more sense.. in my game there was no way to make more Grey Warden's in time. So tell me what happened in yours that would have allowed you to make even 1, let alone 100 wardens?Tlazolteotl said:
Let me just say Alistair went missing, and the ability to make more became IMO a "stopgap" measure.
No? I spent quite a lot of time in my camp - time I could have used for different other things.But that Grey Warden thingy actually is quite easy - darkspawn-blood - get some strong guys, they drink it voilá Grey Wardens. Causes maybe the loss of some dudes, but who really cares in a world you could be stomped into the ground by an Ogre? Oh, I forgot, it´s kinda ritual... hmm... and secret... hmm... I ask myself if I got some advantage from it. When Alistair mentioned "WE (hoho, glorious as we are...) can feel the Darkspawn!" I wanted my wolf medallion back... because I felt nothing?! =.O´
