Re: Dragon Age Detail
 

Bioware Has been calling DAO The Next Baldur's Gate. Well I have to say "NOT EVEN CLOSE" The first chapter of Baldur's Gate getting a group of adventurers to the mines to find out what was screwing up the Iron has more adventure and better story content than Dragon Age before the expansion. Then after finding out that the problem is not the mines but a group of Bad guys in the far north at Baldur's Gate are the real problem and exactly what is behind the problems is still ahead. Dragon Age tells no real story it tells how and what the mission is and that you have to do to stop the Darkspawn and the Dragon God is whats causing the problems. Then in order to get one of the main base points of the game you have to buy each part of the game.
That in itself is anal I can't figure out why Bioware didn't just put everything in the game and charge for it in the first place mainly Wardens Keep as it was closer to BG type of adventure but still very short after the ghost story and some skeleton fights that were not too bad but I still can't say it's any where near as good a game as Baldur's Gate and was quite disappointed with the whole system and game story in general. It just seemed to leave too much out and replace quality and intrigue out of the game and left you with just the battles. Then there are the weapons and they were just a pile of generic want to Be's what happened to the epic magic and weapons.
Just Disappointing .
TCB

Re: Dragon Age Detail
 

If you judge the game vs. BG you will indeed be dissapointed. It is no BG. Nothing will be. It was a different time, back then. D&D games were restricted to DOS for the most part. Develepors cared about quality. Nobody charged for "premium content" because most people didn't purchase things online. When Baldurs Gate went on the market there was nothing like it at the time. There was a niche there that was filled instantly.

I agree, there is more combat than story and I would gladly take the BG narrator voice and some scrolling text tethered to some artwork as opposed to NPC cutscenes.

I don't know what to tell you. It's a good game, but not an amazing game. And it's not D&D. Things have changed in the gaming industry. I think the last memorable D&D game released was Nevewinter Nights 1. I don't know why more companies aren't trying to tap the D&D market...it is very lucrative. Blame Atari and WotC for being too rigid I guess. Let's see how Baldurs Gate 3 shapes up if and when it ever gets released.

Re: Dragon Age Detail
 

Have to say I flagrantly disagree with this. Mask of the Betrayer was heads and tails above vanilla NWN 1 for writing, story, choice, consequence, memorable characters, encounters etc.
Storm of Zehir also does a reasonable job also of attempting to restore an old fashioned feeling of party creation and swashbuckling adventure.

I hear where you're coming from regarding the dearth of D&D adventures though. It is a different age now.
But I definitely empathise with you tCB, check my feedback thread on Dragon Age and add your own two cents if you like. :) It was certainly a step backwards in many ways than one.

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Bah, NWN2 did itself in from the get-go. Maybe because the vanilla NWN2 was such a mess to begin with. While the story and plot in NWN 1 were indeed weak (Aribeth), I can remember I was excited just thinking about playing it. The kind of nerdy excitment that I got with Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale. Unfortunately, I didn't feel like that about NWN2 at all. Wanted to, but didn't.

Re: Dragon Age Detail
 

Ahh, but have you actually played Mask of the Betrayer though?
Judging it by mere association with NWN2 (even if it is an expansion) isn't exactly doing it justice.

I'll just say that you're missing out if you don't give it a shot rather rely too heavily on logical argument.;)

Re: Dragon Age Detail
 

Yes, although not finished it. The engine bogs the game down so much that even when you finally get a good story, it's diluted. Who knows? I may grit my teeth and plow through it one day although, if you read other threads I have posted about it you will see I have tried doing so more than once. Also played Storm of Zehir somewhat recently and frankly, I got bored after a few hours...

Re: Dragon Age Detail
 

In case you guys haven't been continuing to play D&D pnp, I'll let you know that when compared to BG and BG2, not even D&D is D&D anymore. 2 things changed everything: Warhammer tabletop games and WoW.

D&D 4th ed. is basically a lame tabletop game. Roleplay has virtually disappeared. Every battle is set on a map with miniatures, and you have cards to play as your spells and abilities. There are a bazillion buffs, debuffs, auras, marks, etc. and if you don't have a set of magnetic chips to track this stuff you'll go nuts. Sometimes we'll end up with one miniature standing atop a mountaintop of chips to represent all this. Then you go to attack and the math gets horrendous.

BG and BG2 were based on 2nd Ed. D&D, which is still my favorite version, and the only one I'll ever run as DM. That game doesn't exist any longer and is out of production. It was replaced by the horrible suckfest that was 3.0 and then by the horrible OP-fest that was 3.5, and now by the tabletop WoW/Warhammer wannabe that is 4.0. I promise you, my pally in D&D 4.0 plays more like my WoW pally than any Pally to have ever existed in D&D before -- all the way down to his thrown Captn. America shield.

The 1990's have come and gone. You may rightfully, or not, think they were better or worse. But they are no more. Today's gamers are way to ADD for that stuff anymore.

Re: Dragon Age Detail
 

Yes, they are gone. They just don't make games like they used to. The awe I was in when BG1 came out...I couldn't stop playing it. IWD also I loved. NWN brought this awe to another level - albeit a different one. Anything after that went downhill, D&D license or not.

I have also glimpsed 4E with its "daily powers" and stuff. I think they looked at what people were playing nowadays (WoW, Magic the Gathering, Anime/Dragonball-ish stuff) and tried to reinvent D&D into a combo of all that. Why they betrayed their longtime fans with these changes I don't know...but it is a far cry from what it used to be. It's a very linear, automated feeling game as opposed to the open-endedness that AD&D 2nd edition granted you. With AD&D I always felt like the campaign world was a blank canvas of creativity, just waiting to be explored. With this thing I feel like controlled, stifled - and this is just after skimming the rules and mechanics of it. Even the core rulebooks look more like cardgame manuals than D&D manuals.

Re: Dragon Age Detail
 

I was very pleasantly surprised by MotB, and enjoyed it thoroughly. I can't quite work out why, however...

Maybe it has something to do with the Rashemon setting - culturally different from what we've gotten used to in other BG/NWN games. Maybe that was the spark that triggered the designers' imaginations a little bit, and maybe that extra imagination is what i appreciate about it?

Edit: on that same cultural note, the music was great too.

Re: Dragon Age Detail
 

I actually felt the same way. So much so that I still haven't purchased MotB.

The base game left me disappointed, along with CS from Atari. I ditched the franchise and never looked back, and won't. I'm not going to harp on it though, as I did say I would leave it alone. I have, too. Although, I will say the NWN2 toolset was easier to use than the DA one is. I still haven't really gotten into it, yet.