[quote name='whoknows']So yesterday I was playing Phantasy Star Portable 2 and there was someone else there named Joel and I was like "Too bad that's not Captain Joel. Just a normal Joel without a rank"[/QUOTE] Whoknows, I love you.
You dislike all DLC or just DLC armors and such? I liked Awakenings, Witch Hunt, Return to Ostagar, Shale, and Warden's Keep from the DAO, the others were meh in my opinion. DA2's Exiled Prince mission beginning was pretty nice, haven't played through the whole thing yet,though. I like all the Signature Edition, Blood Dragon armor, Ser Isacc armor, and Black Emporium stuff in DA2, though. Realllly great shit for the beginning of the game.
I'm looking forward to things at E3... thats about all I'll say.
[quote name='ihadFG']Oh and I also want to see if CD Projekt will be announcing The Witcher 2 for consoles.[/QUOTE]
What do you mean if? It's pretty much been confirmed at this point.
[quote name='CaptainJoel']I also agree on the Sigrun love. I loved her, I wish she was in DA2. Also, how'd you guys like the Black Emporium? I LOVE IT. So ing random.[/QUOTE]
It's alright since it came with the game. I'd be pissed if I paid any amount of cash for it though.
I dislike DLC gear, especially at the beginning of the game. Throwing a bunch of awesome shit at me at the beginning of the game just means there's one less carrot on the game's stick.
I've no particular problem with the concept of DLC, especially for proper expansions like Awakenings.
Though, yeah, having a ing DLC salesman in my party's camp is a bit of a piss-off. Explore your own bloody keep.
[quote name='Chibi_Kaji']It's alright since it came with the game. I'd be pissed if I paid any amount of cash for it though.[/QUOTE]I got it for free by emailing EA and saying I didn't have a code.
Third time it's worked now, I'm surprised they're so helpful.
[quote name='The Crotch']I dislike DLC gear, especially at the beginning of the game. Throwing a bunch of awesome shit at me at the beginning of the game just means there's one less carrot on the game's stick.
I've no particular problem with the concept of DLC, especially for proper expansions like Awakenings.[/QUOTE]
Why? It's not like you can really use the stuff like the Sig. contents through the whole game, right? You do find better stuff, right?
I mean, I haven't found anything better yet, but I assumed it's like the ME2 armors and DAO Blood Dragon armor and I will find something a lot better than it towards the middle of the game.
[quote name='CaptainJoel']Why? It's not like you can really use the stuff like the Sig. contents through the whole game, right? You do find better stuff, right?
I mean, I haven't found anything better yet, but I assumed it's like the ME2 armors and DAO Blood Dragon armor and I will find something a lot better than it towards the middle of the game.[/QUOTE]
Some stuff is scaling, meaning it keeps improving as you level (though it's possible to find better stuff), but as I said, DA2 generally does better with not-overpowering its DLC items than DAO. However!
1: It still renders all initial item-scavenging totally pointless. Any shield I find for the first eight hours? you, I've got this lion shield thing. So why do all these other items even exist? Just to sell?
2: In both DAO and ME2, there were plenty of items that were top-tier all the way through. ME2 didn't release them until well after the game launched, but whatever the that last armour set was called kicks the shit out of pretty much everything else. DAO had things like the Helm of Honnleath, which was available the second you got out of Ostagar, and there was no reason to ever take it off your rogue of choice from there on out.
[quote name='The Crotch']Some stuff is scaling, meaning it keeps improving as you level (though it's possible to find better stuff), but as I said, DA2 generally does better with not-overpowering its DLC items than DAO. However!
1: It still renders all initial item-scavenging totally pointless. Any shield I find for the first eight hours? you, I've got this lion shield thing. So why do all these other items even exist? Just to sell?
2: In both DAO and ME2, there were plenty of items that were top-tier all the way through. ME2 didn't release them until well after the game launched, but whatever the that last armour set was called kicks the shit out of pretty much everything else. DAO had things like the Helm of Honnleath, which was available the second you got out of Ostagar, and there was no reason to ever take it off your rogue of choice from there on out.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I think the other items are just supposed to be trade fodder to build up your money. I'm only 5 hours in and I already got around 60 gold, which seems pretty ing ridiculous.
I'm not sure about what ME2 armor you're talking about, I mixed it up with my armors throughout my playthroughs and I always ended up coming back to the Collector armor. It just helped the most with my play style. I didn't collect the Helm of Honnleath in DAO until towards the end of the game, but even with that it didn't stay on anyone long because I was constantly finding much, much better shit. The armor didn't get consistently leveled until Orzammar, after that everyone used the same armor until the end.
A bit more DA2 stuff, now that I don't have to look at my last eleventeen paragraphs on the last page of the GGT.
Combat animations were... something of a pet peeve. Animation is as important to a character as writing, and DA2's animation was just bizarre. Mages especially. It's hard to sell Merril as clumsy and awkward (as her dialogue attempts to) and then have her dancing around her staff like a stripper on a pole (note: minor exaggeration).
The game has too ing many characters. Deus Ex's Warren Spector explains it far better than I:
I loved that DA2 didn't overdo references to DAO. Hear me, Mass Effect 2 team? I don't need an update from every single ing sidequest giver in all of the first game. You got the odd reference, the odd appearance... enough that you felt satisfied, and not so much that it felt like they were just cramming them in for the sake of cramming them in.
Having said that, the fact that some of the appearances totally ignored what you did in DAO is a little annoying - people killed during an imported save can and will show up in DA2. Some of that might be fixed in the upcoming patch, but other bits are too plot relevant for that to happen.
Also, the codex was a billionty times more navigable.
[quote name='CaptainJoel']I'm only 5 hours in, but right now I disagree on characters. I loved everyone in DAO. Alistair, Leliana, Sten, Shale, Morrigan. So far, I think I only like the Elf chick in DA2.[/QUOTE]
Again, the cynic in me thought that Shale was just an attempt to remind everyone how awesome HK-47 from KotOR was.
But... characters, characters. Hmm.
I should differentiate between "likeable" and "good", as you can be one without the other.
Let's take everyone's favourite pair from Mass Effect, Kaidan and Ashley. Kaidan is likeable - generally alright guy, on your side for most everything, etc. Ashley... Ashley kills dogs. Ashley is not likeable.
Yet Kaidan is not a good character, and yet Ashley is. Kaidan had no arc - his major character-defining moments were all backstory - and there's little potential for conflict with him. Ashley's also got her most important bits in her backstory, but that was okay, because conflict followed her, which made her interesting.
A good DAO example of this would be Morrigan. Hated her, but she was a very well done character. Not only did she create conflict (and, as your grade 8 English teacher told you, conflict = drama = entertainment), but she had a character arc within the game - she wasn't necessarily the same person at the beginning of the game as she was at the end. So she wins as a Good Character.
But I still hated her as a person. I don't have much patience for the whole "is an enormous asshole to everyone as a defence mechanism" kinda person.
"Wait, Crotch," someone calls from the crowd, "What about Planescape Torment?"
"What about Planescape Torment?"
"You loved that game! What about Annah! Doesn't she follow that pattern? Did you hate her, too?"
"No, person who evidently follows my every post, I did not hate her. Annah was awesome - a good character, and one I liked."
"So why did you like her and not Morrigan?"
"Oh. Um... red hair."
"What?"
"Yeah. It's my big weakness. Don't tell anyone."
"So in ME2, why didn't you and Kelly Cham-"
"Scale itch."
"Oh. Yeah."
Addendum: Thinking God talks to you negates the attractiveness of red hair. Also, Leliana's facial animation always bugged me. So nyah!
Crotch, if life was Dragon Age and that was a speech then you just got yourself a permanent position in my party.
I hate both Kaiden and Ashley, though. I also don't think Morrigan was ever a mean person, it seemed more like she was just brought up that way, but deep down she really did love your character and just wanted to be nice. It was Flemeth's teachings and her lonely upbringing that made her realllly distrustful of all people (authority figures, especially) but after you let her know that her mother was wrong she really establishes that she's a nice person.
[quote name='ihadFG']How long have you played DKCR? Because at first it seemed a bit weird, but I got used to the controls after playing it a bit.[/QUOTE]
Shouldn't you be holding up your end of the challenge right now?
[quote name='The Crotch']Nevermind that she seems completely batshit crazy right off the hop, we lose a lot of EXP if we don't have someone who can open treasure chests![/QUOTE]
I mean sure she sounded a little out there when you first meet her, but if you talk to her enough I think it is a little less clear on what she believes really happened to her. Plus I mean you have Wynne
who is possessed by some entity from the Fade.
So who is to say that something in the Fade (maybe not an actual God) didn't tell Leliana something while she was dreaming?
[quote name='icebeast']I mean sure she sounded a little out there when you first meet her, but if you talk to her enough I think it is a little less clear on what she believes really happened to her. Plus I mean you have Wynne
who is possessed by some entity from the Fade.
So who is to say that something in the Fade (maybe not an actual God) didn't tell Leliana something while she was dreaming?[/QUOTE]
This is all true, but none of it is particularly relevant when you're actually recruiting her. That's all stuff you pick up after the fact. The only thing you know when you get her is that she seems crazy.
I would have been absolutely in love with BioWare if Zevran actually betrayed you in the end. Maybe, like, a cutscene where he tries to kill you in camp after you finish your next main quest. Could even have him kill your dog in the assassination attempt - it's not so big a loss that any player would actually be hampered (the dog being the weakest character), but it's big enough a loss that the player is punished for recruiting their own assassin you ing moron.
I would have been absolutely in love with BioWare if Zevran actually betrayed you in the end. Maybe, like, a cutscene where he tries to kill you in camp after you finish your next main quest. Could even have him kill your dog in the assassination attempt - it's not so big a loss that any player would actually be hampered (the dog being the weakest character), but it's big enough a loss that the player is punished for recruiting their own assassin you ing moron.
[/QUOTE]
Wait, are you saying
you would have wanted them to make him betray you in different way than they handled it?
[quote name='The Crotch']This is all true, but none of it is particularly relevant when you're actually recruiting her. That's all stuff you pick up after the fact. The only thing you know when you get her is that she seems crazy.
I would have been absolutely in love with BioWare if Zevran actually betrayed you in the end. Maybe, like, a cutscene where he tries to kill you in camp after you finish your next main quest. Could even have him kill your dog in the assassination attempt - it's not so big a loss that any player would actually be hampered (the dog being the weakest character), but it's big enough a loss that the player is punished for recruiting their own assassin you ing moron.
[/QUOTE]
I don't know that I would say I thought she was crazy, perhaps extremely pious, but having visions in a game that is in a setting with magic, doesn't seem all that far fetched to me. Plus, again it was interesting for me to find out why she believed she had been given a vision from the Maker.
Uh, Zevran
can betray you, he did in my playthrough (maybe because I never used or talked to him).
[quote name='CaptainJoel']Crotch, if life was Dragon Age and that was a speech then you just got yourself a permanent position in my party.[/QUOTE]
D'aww.
[quote name='The Crotch']Eh... I dunno. It's an established part of lore that the Maker doesn't talk to people. Like, that's what the entire church is built around. The one time the Maker talked to someone. Leliana's claim that the Maker talked to her... well, it's about equivalent to claiming to be the Messiah. I would not bring someone claiming to be the Messiah with me if I was trying to save the world from an unspeakable abomination.[/QUOTE]
By your previous admission about how you don't know much about Leliana at that point in the game you probably don't know much about the church either. Also, if you happen to have Leliana in your party for the Urn of Sacred Ashes part of the game you would have learned:
The Urn of Sacred Ashes
During The Urn of Sacred Ashes, the Guardian briefly talks to each of the party members about their past. When the Guardian speaks to Leliana, he states that the Maker only spoke to Andraste, and accuses her of making her vision up, stating that she feared her life would become dull after joining the Chantry, so she fabricated the story of a vision from the Maker himself, reveling in the negative and positive attention it brought her. Affronted by the accusation, Leliana in disbelief will deny creating a fake vision for vanity.
Again it comes down to whether she really saw something or not, but she seems very convinced she did, which is what leads me to believe perhaps what she saw wasn't the Maker but something in the Fade giving her a vision.
[quote name='ihadFG']How long have you played DKCR? Because at first it seemed a bit weird, but I got used to the controls after playing it a bit.[/QUOTE]
I'm on the 4th world. I'm starting to get used to it, but the shake=attack still isn't clicking.
[quote name='icebeast']By your previous admission about how you don't know much about Leliana at that point in the game you probably don't know much about the church either.[/QUOTE]
But your character does (Origin story dependant, naturally - if they even believe in the Maker.).
And you can too, if you read the right codex entries (I think. It's been a little while, but I believe you get a decent run-down of the church in the noble and mage origins, at the very least.).
(This post has a lot of parenthesis.)
And a spoiler warning.
EDIT: And now it has an "EDIT:".
[quote name='icebeast']Again it comes down to whether she really saw something or not, but she seems very convinced she did, which is what leads me to believe perhaps what she saw wasn't the Maker but something in the Fade giving her a vision. [/quote]
That's even worse! She's got a ing pride demon after her!
Non-demons reaching out to mortals is an extreme rarity. So says Wynne (who, if she's smart, should be very worried that she's got a nasty case of pride demon abomination all up ins). And the codex. And Justice, a Fade creature who isn't a demon. They just don't give a about us (Wynne excluded, for unknown reasons).
It's feasible, much in the same way Tempest beating Flash in a best-of-seven if feasible (or feasible like anyone but kainzero and Darren understanding that reference is feasible).
For me, my dislike of Leliana came from a lot of things she said. The "Maker talked to me" bit was only part of it. She just seemed loopy to me, and not in a cute way. I was also not a fan of the Chantry at all, seeing as how they commited acts I considered to be evil, so Leliana being part of the Chantry didn't add anything to my opinion of her.
[quote name='distgfx']I tend to remember people who run from a challenge.[/QUOTE]
It's nice to know I'll be in your thoughts. This one has gotten more mileage than I expected.
[quote name='The Crotch']
Well, I read her like this: much like I have "always plays protoss in Starcraft" as part of my identity, Morrigan has "does not want friends" as part of her identity, built up over many years. And just as I occasionally wonder what playing terran would be like, she too thinks about friendship - but decides against it, because ultimately, she really doesn't want it. When (if) you come along and challenge that, she reacts with her usual hostility, a defence mechanism she created unconsciously to help her resist temptation (I should get around to creating a defence mechanism to keep me from playing terran). Temptation becomes too great, defence mechanism fails, self-image changes, self changes.
I will never play terran, though.
I meant as part of his plan. His betrayal near the end of DAO is purely opportunistic, and only if you treat him poorly.
[/QUOTE]
I guess I could see Morrigan like that, except in our romance she clearly DID NOT want to spend more time with me after I
killed Flemeth.
She took a major stand on that, every time I went to her and was like, "Honey, Let's spend some time together" She was like "Nope, Flo's in town biiiiitch and it's high tide". If she really never wanted friends or wanted to stay mean, I'm sure she would have. Just like she wouldn't have let me in
that mirror with her.
Or in her backdoor.
BOOM!
I agree with what you said about Zevran. I don't know how anyone got him to not like them though. Dude was sweet on me bad, I even accidently ed him.
[quote name='The Crotch']Non-demons reaching out to mortals is an extreme rarity. So says Wynne (who, if she's smart, should be very worried that she's got a nasty case of pride demon abomination all up ins). And the codex. And Justice, a Fade creature who isn't a demon. They just don't give a about us (Wynne excluded, for unknown reasons).
It's feasible, much in the same way Tempest beating Flash in a best-of-seven if feasible (or feasible like anyone but kainzero and Darren understanding that reference is feasible).[/QUOTE]
Though I pretended to be nice to Wynne, I really wanted the demon to take over her so I could kill her. She always disagree with my shit.
[quote name='diddy310']Some douche just posted LA Noire spoilers in the deals forum as a post titled "LA Noire 19.99 at Best Buy not YMMV"[/QUOTE]
Huh, I wonder if it was the same dude that spoiled Heavy Rain? I know Cheapy supposedly IP banned him, but that's a similar tactic to what that guy used.
Wynne was like bizarro-Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic 2. Always going on about some philosophical bullshit and wanting me to be all, "Wow, old person, you're so wise!"
ing random.[/QUOTE]
Mortal Kombat? I can't seem to play more than a level or two at a time in Lara Croft: Guardian of Light