Apparently art is measured in a scientific way and thus not subjective.
What the hell are some people smoking? o_O
Back OT: DA:O and DA2 both have a different take on things which is primary why DA2 was so polarising.
DA:O is your classic 'bad things are happening and YOU are the ONLY ONE that can stop it' hero plot/game.
DA2 is a 'you are a normal person in a city that's going to hell in a hand basket' type plot/game.
Execution-wise DA:O was better but thought DA2 did some stuff that BW haven't done before and while it isn't a perfect game it does show BW will give something new a shot.
Excited about TOR regardless though.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Aesthetics, beauty, taste have never been nor ever will be subjective.
I was actually compelled to agree with you until this sentence, completely false. Throughout history, it is evident that different cultures had a different ideal to what art meant to them, and even within the same cultural heritage, art changes and evolves through time so that a painting can be considered trash one day only to be held in the highest esteem centuries or even decades later.
"History is a prism by which all things are measured". A quote I heard once. But here it doesn't matter. Cultures art forms may differ, but the underling principles are still there. Things such as composition, lighting, color mix do not just go away because you think its so. The notion that trash one day is treasure the next applies to yard sales and individuals not cultures. While it is true that an individuals art may not be appreciated in its day, its usually elevated to something more because of something unique to it, such as a new style not because it lacks even the most basic fundamentals. To say otherwise elevates crayon doodles by six year olds to master painters.
For someone who claims years in University studying art you sure like your extremes. The color text is sort of contradictory since you're trying to disagree with me at the same time that you acknowledge that my statement is true. There are certain paradigms that most art incorporates, but true beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm not saying my stick figures will one day be considered art, of course not, I suck at drawing, but to argue that there is no subjective element to art apreciation is just being blind to the beauty of art, that of self-expression.
Perhaps I was hasty in that sentence. The insistance of considering aesthetics, aka. art, as subjective and subjective only, boils my blood. Subjective is the realm of the individual and his or her opinion.
To put the discussion more on topic; While I hate World of Warcraft as a mmorpg, I do recognize the very well put together qualities of the game as is the case with Bioware's DA.O and DA2. Bioware has created quite a few notable titles, yet lately thru either time or money or elements out of their control, or for that matter completely in their control, they have gotten sloppy. DA2 is no where near what DA.O is. Nor is DA.O anywhere near where Baldur's Gate was. Some of that can be attributed to the new-ness of a title and its sequels. Some.
I do like this. one guy says he enjoyed Dragon age and hopes ToR will do well as well, then instead of being glad someone enjoys something, we have to go into a debate about wether the game has a good story based on some scientific facts or something and thus get into a fight over whether art is subjective or not.
personally I'm glad Nomss enjoyed the game and had fun. After all, thats what games are about having fun and if a Bioware game allowed him to have a good time for just a little while that is all thats important.
Games are an business but at least this business gives you something you'll remember. Characters, stories, and emotions. Sometimes i think people run too high trying to pull apart everything.
Nomss said the story was superb. I'm sure this is his opinion of the game. Who cares about wether it's better then books movies or what not. This is a level scale. Sure people might have disagreements over whats good, but thats opinion based. To him he felt the story was well done and deserved the place of superb. I happen to agree with him on this as well.
The only thing we can hope for is for at least some people to get the same feeling out of an MMO, I'm certainly hoping so because i've yet to get a feeling of being attached to any character since my barb shaman in EQ and that was only because i'd played her for 4.3 years.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I do like this. one guy says he enjoyed Dragon age and hopes ToR will do well as well, then instead of being glad someone enjoys something, we have to go into a debate about wether the game has a good story based on some scientific facts or something and thus get into a fight over whether art is subjective or not.
personally I'm glad Nomss enjoyed the game and had fun. After all, thats what games are about having fun and if a Bioware game allowed him to have a good time for just a little while that is all thats important.
Games are an business but at least this business gives you something you'll remember. Characters, stories, and emotions. Sometimes i think people run too high trying to pull apart everything.
Nomss said the story was superb. I'm sure this is his opinion of the game. Who cares about wether it's better then books movies or what not. This is a level scale. Sure people might have disagreements over whats good, but thats opinion based. To him he felt the story was well done and deserved the place of superb. I happen to agree with him on this as well.
The only thing we can hope for is for at least some people to get the same feeling out of an MMO, I'm certainly hoping so because i've yet to get a feeling of being attached to any character since my barb shaman in EQ and that was only because i'd played her for 4.3 years.
And here I thought games were about fun. Its when companies forget that its about fun and run only like its for business that I get worried.
I do like this. one guy says he enjoyed Dragon age and hopes ToR will do well as well, then instead of being glad someone enjoys something, we have to go into a debate about wether the game has a good story based on some scientific facts or something and thus get into a fight over whether art is subjective or not.
personally I'm glad Nomss enjoyed the game and had fun. After all, thats what games are about having fun and if a Bioware game allowed him to have a good time for just a little while that is all thats important.
Games are an business but at least this business gives you something you'll remember. Characters, stories, and emotions. Sometimes i think people run too high trying to pull apart everything.
Nomss said the story was superb. I'm sure this is his opinion of the game. Who cares about wether it's better then books movies or what not. This is a level scale. Sure people might have disagreements over whats good, but thats opinion based. To him he felt the story was well done and deserved the place of superb. I happen to agree with him on this as well.
The only thing we can hope for is for at least some people to get the same feeling out of an MMO, I'm certainly hoping so because i've yet to get a feeling of being attached to any character since my barb shaman in EQ and that was only because i'd played her for 4.3 years.
And here I thought games were about fun.
guess it wasn't clear enough. It's about fun to the customer, it's a business to the people making them. They may love their games but they sell them to make money. While the customer should only be worried about a game being fun.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Sure game companies are in business. They do have to make money to continue. But fun should come first, then profit. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. As Bioware puts fun first, your right we dont have to worry. I played the hell out of DA.O to me it was fun. But worry creeps in when I attempted to play DA2.
Sure game companies are in business. They do have to make money to continue. But fun should come first, then profit. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. As Bioware puts fun first, your right we dont have to worry. I played the hell out of DA.O to me it was fun. But worry creeps in when I attempted to play DA2.
Sure i can undestand that. i'd prefer companies always put fun before money. They rarely do that. Lets hope Bioware does.
I can't really comment on DA2 but i can take a few topics i saw that were problems in the game
First off people said they hated that everything is copy and pasted (the tell tale signs of a rushed game)
What we have heard from the devs is that each of the 17 worlds are handcrafted. Thus not copy and pasted
Second was the story element. Never really going anywhere (or at least i think that was the problem)
This is what happens when you pick a guy that is not the savior of the world. He/she mills around does random quests, goes to arenas, never really getting to god like status. We know that in SW;ToR your not going to be the run of the mill person in the personal story. You are the center of it for the duration of the personal story. No idea how the rest of the game works though in this respect
Thirdly i think people got tired of seeing Kirkwell all the time. We know there are 17 planets each with different systems.
Finally and the biggest thing is the rush feel. I think this is largely due to them only having DA2 in production for about 2 years, Bioware games i feel need about twice that amount of time. SW:ToR on the other hand has and continues to be in production for 5 to 6 years now. Lots more time
I'm not trying to say that SW;ToR will be good and i can understand the worry if you didn't care for DA2. However i do look at BIoware's history and see a much better outlook in this case. It seems they got all the good people from BIoware on SW;ToR and are taking it slow trying to make a big game. Bioware has also wanted to make an MMO since the days of NeverWinter Nights. So i'm getting the feeling they want this one to be really well done.
In the end if you do have worries its always best to get both customer and critic reviews then see videos of it yourself and decide then if you want to plop down the X amount of dollars, euros or whatever other curriency is needed to buy the game for yourself.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Why does everyone insist on calling anything art related, SUBJECTIVE? Untrue, or at least untrue to a point. As with any art, there are rules to creation. With writing it can be simple things like grammar, punctuation, or syntax. Usually its more in-depth things like rhythm, and character development. In architecture its can be things like lighting, shade, shadow, flow. In painting it can be color use or non-use, composition, or depth of field.
All art is not just a matter of what someone likes or dislikes, there must be reasons behind it. Aesthetics, beauty, taste have never been nor ever will be subjective.
You have to be joking here. Art, in any form, has ALWAYS been and will ALWAYS be subjective. It is up to the personal tastes of the individual to decide if it is something they like or not, and to say otherwise is just absurd.
Have you been trained in any art form? Somehow I doubt it. As someone who spent eight years in university, and another five as an apprentice glass blower, you have no clue and dwell amongst those of the insistance group. Just because someone may like something personally, does not mean its good. Thats why a Chihuly or a Renoir are in a museum and your kids is on the fridge.
It took you 8 years of study at a university to not understand that art is completely subjective? Even after 5 years of apprenticeship you still did not understand? I would feel sorry for the time and money you wasted, but you seem to have done it willingly, so it is your fault.
Let me ask you this, if people do not like an artists work, who buys it? Oh right, you answered that, it hangs on a frig somewhere. In order for art, in any form, to be "good" it has to be liked, therefore it is up to the subjective whims of the public at large. I have seen many "Master Peices" that in my opinion were worth less than than a role of gaudy wallpaper and at the same time critically denounced art (It was so uninspired!) that was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. I have read poems that were acclaimed to be some of the best in the world that was little more than drivel and read the work of a ten year old that made me weep.
I am sorry that your 8 years of university study and 5 years of glass blowing apprentiseship blinded you to the real truth. Art IS in the eye of the beholder and no "expert" alive today can tell me what good art is. I get to make that decision, not them. The artist that does not understand this simple truth will always be a failure.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
DAO was a great game IMO. I hear DA2 isn't, which is why im relucant to buy it. Hopefully its because they are focusing on SWTOR.
No, it is because the company is changing in an effort to get more of the mainstream.
It's the same reason ME2 was RPG lite with all the RPG character control depth thrown out in favour of making an interacitve movie.
The Bioware that made all those great games years ago no longer exists in philosophy or make up, especially under the yoke of EA.
Thank god it seems that Bethesda and others are staying with us RPGers tbh.
Two completely different studios did those games, and a completely different studio is doing SWTOR. ME2 was also one of the greatest games of all time, and you could micromanage your team if you really wanted to.
Bethesda has thrown out plenty of terrible games with their name attached to it and yet, the one game that BioWare doesn't completely knock out of the park suddenly means the entire company is in steep decline? Ridiculous if you ask me.
Bethesda games have not dumbed down? Oblivion was a husk of a game with no soul what so ever. Sure DA 2 was a dissapointment and The Witcher 2 utterly nuked it as this years best RPG but Bioware are still the established masters. Everyone is entitled to 1 off day, they claim they have heard the feedback and will adjust, apparently even EA are saying that it was their fault for rushing it so hopefully they learned.
But DA 1 was fantastic, best rpg of its year and one of the best since the golden age of Baldurs gate 2/
OMG, superb story, immense replayablity. Nice game, leaves me wanting for MORE. BW keep this up in TOR... oh man I don't see how the subs could stop increasing. The control they gave us, it really produced the feeling that everything revolved around my decisions.
Anyways, I think as the time goes, BW will only get popular and so will TOR.
Really? I thought the story was really generic. It's more or less the same as all classic fantasy/Bioware stories. The only character I liked was Morrigan. The morale decisions were a joke, and the only ones that mattered were the 3 or so you make at the very end. The world just didn't grab me. Maybe I've just played too many Bioware games, they all start to play the same.
Bethesda games have not dumbed down? Oblivion was a husk of a game with no soul what so ever. Sure DA 2 was a dissapointment and The Witcher 2 utterly nuked it as this years best RPG but Bioware are still the established masters. Everyone is entitled to 1 off day, they claim they have heard the feedback and will adjust, apparently even EA are saying that it was their fault for rushing it so hopefully they learned.
But DA 1 was fantastic, best rpg of its year and one of the best since the golden age of Baldurs gate 2/
Just dodge the sequel and stay happy.
Uh yeah, no. DA was a slightly above average RPG at best. It was far too generic to call the best of anything.
Ive read several Star Wars novels (dated after the movies).
What I found was that some were good, and some were bad. I then payed attention to the author of the book, and found that I did not like certain writers.
Each class in SWTOR has their own writer, so you may that find you like some storylines of a class, but not others.
On a side note, DA2 is not a bad game. Its below par of what Bioware normally puts out, but it is still a good game. DAO set the bar way way high, so a sequel would be hard to out do it. I would of prefered in DA2 that they continue the storyline of the hero from Origins. They also got lazy with repeating the same map areas over and over.
Bethesda has thrown out plenty of terrible games with their name attached to it and yet, the one game that BioWare doesn't completely knock out of the park suddenly means the entire company is in steep decline? Ridiculous if you ask me.
Yeah plenty terible games. Daggerfall Battlspire,morrorwind,oblivion. Sure i see what u mean...
DAO was a great game IMO. I hear DA2 isn't, which is why im relucant to buy it. Hopefully its because they are focusing on SWTOR.
No, it is because the company is changing in an effort to get more of the mainstream.
I disagree - I mean, I think that's part of the problem, but with DA2 specifically, the bit of dumbing down wasn't nearly as bad as the sheer lack of content compared to DA:O. I couldn't believe the entire game takes place in Kirkwall, which wasn't even as big or as detailed as Denerim. I couldn't believe every interior I went into looked like the same three places over and over.
They cut some major corners content-wise, and I can only hope it's because they're putting all their real resources into SWTOR.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I wouldn't mind seeing what CD Projekt Red could come up with for a MMO. Considering they, figuratively speaking of course, ripped out Bioware's still beating heart, took a bite out of it, curbstomped their head to the pavement, and had a good wank over its steaming corpse with The Witcher 2, expanding on that world might be interesting. However, CDPR is still a young company, so I don't think they'd risk an MMO venture yet, since they've taken Bioware's single player mantle away with a cocky grin.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Dragon Age's story is extremely generic. Maybe it's superb if you don't read much fantasy books or play many fantasy games, but there isn't much about it that sets it apart from the basic guidelines.
OMG! This is just way over the top. When they make ANY game in ANY genre that can compete with a well written book, I'll be impressed. Let's simplify this argument just a little, jacks is fun I guess, but no where's near as good as FOOTBALL!
Highlighted a certain part in orange. I didn't just compare Dragon Age's story to books. Learn to read.
So sorry, the first part was so over the top I forgot to add that BioWare's ability to tell a story far outstripes MOST games as well. YOU might want to ratchet the grandiose comparissons done a little bit in the future.
Maybe their cutscenes do, but their cutscenes didn't make Dragon Age's very generic story much better. I found reading text in Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age much better. Probably because the story was better. I also liked the cutscenes in FFIX (only FF I played besides the DS version of IV) much better than Dragon Age's. Probably because they were telling the story much more cinematically than Dragon Age's.
The only thing I found that Dragon Age's cutscenes do better to tell a story than any other game I've played is that they offer "choice". Although I have to say that the "choice" that Dragon Age offered was little more than an illusion considering no matter how many times I play through the game I will be doing the same quests no matter what with very little variation.
Honestly i think Bioware games have the worst replayabilty of all the market. So your comment is a bit funny to me.
I don't think i ever played their game twice except for Baldur gate, and its not because i never tryed.
I just never felt as replaying the same story with an other angle to be even attractive honeslty; i think each class should have his very own story to have anything close to "replayabilty".
At least a totally different twist, in bioware game its just like looking at the same gem ffrom different facette. Somehow it just isn't attractive. I just don't think its even "realistic", witness from a same event won't ever describe other facette of the same story in fact, never. This is just the theory, but in facts its not what happen. Its just a lot more subtile, the same event shared by many witness will lead in totally diferent story with only few common key aspects, but whatever.
Honeslt the guys at Bioware should put a much stronger twist to make replayabilty better, even if they need to change the story quiet a bit. Keeping exactly the same story is just bad all over to me. If you don't beleive me go talk with a police inspector about this and see what he will teach you about this aspect. Sometime theories well are just theories, they lack a lot of things.
Honestly i think Bioware games have the worst replayabilty of all the market. So your comment is a bit funny to me.
I don't think i ever played their game twice except for Baldur gate, and its not because i never tryed.
I just never felt as replaying the same story with an other angle to be even attractive honeslty; i think each class should have his very own story to have anything close to "replayabilty".
At least a totally different twist, in bioware game its just like looking at the same gem ffrom different facette. Somehow it just isn't attractive. I just don't think its even "realistic", witness from a same event won't ever describe other facette of the same story in fact, never. This is just the theory, but in facts its not what happen. Its just a lot more subtile, the same event shared by many witness will lead in totally diferent story with only few common key aspects, but whatever.
Honeslt the guys at Bioware should put a much stronger twist to make replayabilty better, even if they need to change the story quiet a bit. Keeping exactly the same story is just bad all over to me. If you don't beleive me go talk with a police inspector about this and see what he will teach you about this aspect. Sometime theories well are just theories, they lack a lot of things.
And here is where experiences differ and therefore opinions differ. I don't think there is a single BioWare game that I haven't played at least four times and a couple that I have played a dozen times or more.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Honestly i think Bioware games have the worst replayabilty of all the market. So your comment is a bit funny to me.
I don't think i ever played their game twice except for Baldur gate, and its not because i never tryed.
I just never felt as replaying the same story with an other angle to be even attractive honeslty; i think each class should have his very own story to have anything close to "replayabilty".
At least a totally different twist, in bioware game its just like looking at the same gem ffrom different facette. Somehow it just isn't attractive. I just don't think its even "realistic", witness from a same event won't ever describe other facette of the same story in fact, never. This is just the theory, but in facts its not what happen. Its just a lot more subtile, the same event shared by many witness will lead in totally diferent story with only few common key aspects, but whatever.
Honeslt the guys at Bioware should put a much stronger twist to make replayabilty better, even if they need to change the story quiet a bit. Keeping exactly the same story is just bad all over to me. If you don't beleive me go talk with a police inspector about this and see what he will teach you about this aspect. Sometime theories well are just theories, they lack a lot of things.
And here is where experiences differ and therefore opinions differ. I don't think there is a single BioWare game that I haven't played at least four times and a couple that I have played a dozen times or more.
I wonder what point you are trying to make, are you trying to say that Bioware games have great replayability because you yourself have played them more than once? You yourself have played many Bioware games more than once. Bravo. I played Golden Sun: The Lost Age several times. I've played Sly Cooper 1 and 2 several times each. I've probably played Pokemon Blue more times than you have ever played any Bioware game at all. Just because I've played a game more than once doesn't mean the game has a ton of replayability and the same goes for you.
Honestly i think Bioware games have the worst replayabilty of all the market. So your comment is a bit funny to me.
I don't think i ever played their game twice except for Baldur gate, and its not because i never tryed.
I just never felt as replaying the same story with an other angle to be even attractive honeslty; i think each class should have his very own story to have anything close to "replayabilty".
At least a totally different twist, in bioware game its just like looking at the same gem ffrom different facette. Somehow it just isn't attractive. I just don't think its even "realistic", witness from a same event won't ever describe other facette of the same story in fact, never. This is just the theory, but in facts its not what happen. Its just a lot more subtile, the same event shared by many witness will lead in totally diferent story with only few common key aspects, but whatever.
Honeslt the guys at Bioware should put a much stronger twist to make replayabilty better, even if they need to change the story quiet a bit. Keeping exactly the same story is just bad all over to me. If you don't beleive me go talk with a police inspector about this and see what he will teach you about this aspect. Sometime theories well are just theories, they lack a lot of things.
And here is where experiences differ and therefore opinions differ. I don't think there is a single BioWare game that I haven't played at least four times and a couple that I have played a dozen times or more.
I wonder what point you are trying to make, are you trying to say that Bioware games have great replayability because you yourself have played them more than once? You yourself have played many Bioware games more than once. Bravo. I played Golden Sun: The Lost Age several times. I've played Sly Cooper 1 and 2 several times each. I've probably played Pokemon Blue more times than you have ever played any Bioware game at all. Just because I've played a game more than once doesn't mean the game has a ton of replayability and the same goes for you.
He's trying to say that experiences and opinions differ.
The post he quotes bases the opinion that Bioware games have the worst replayability on his own experiences.
So we've got one negative experience.
He then puts his own positive experience against that ( meaning one positive and one negative experience total ) and concludes that their experiences and thus opinions differ.
Which I'd say is about as valid a conclusion as you can get?
We are the bunny. Resistance is futile. ''/\/\'''''/\/\''''''/\/\ ( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o) (")("),,(")("),(")(")
I wonder what point you are trying to make, are you trying to say that Bioware games have great replayability because you yourself have played them more than once? You yourself have played many Bioware games more than once. Bravo. I played Golden Sun: The Lost Age several times. I've played Sly Cooper 1 and 2 several times each. I've probably played Pokemon Blue more times than you have ever played any Bioware game at all. Just because I've played a game more than once doesn't mean the game has a ton of replayability and the same goes for you.
True, but your basic point is what he was saying more or less. On a related note Bioware released some interesting things about Mass Effect 2 ( I think it was ME2 anyway) that showed information gained through their Cerebral Network, showing a breakdown of the percentages on how the typcial gamer played their games. It was a pretty high percentage that played through more than once, as well as overwhelming numbers who didn't skip any dialogue during their play-through(s).
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I wonder what point you are trying to make, are you trying to say that Bioware games have great replayability because you yourself have played them more than once? You yourself have played many Bioware games more than once. Bravo. I played Golden Sun: The Lost Age several times. I've played Sly Cooper 1 and 2 several times each. I've probably played Pokemon Blue more times than you have ever played any Bioware game at all. Just because I've played a game more than once doesn't mean the game has a ton of replayability and the same goes for you.
True, but your basic point is what he was saying more or less. On a related note Bioware released some interesting things about Mass Effect 2 ( I think it was ME2 anyway) that showed information gained through their Cerebral Network, showing a breakdown of the percentages on how the typcial gamer played their games. It was a pretty high percentage that played through more than once, as well as overwhelming numbers who didn't skip any dialogue during their play-through(s).
1) This is about Dragon Age, not Mass Effect.
2) People have played through Final Fantasy games many times through, they have played through Call of Duty games many times through, they have played through many games many times through. I really don't see any point you are trying to make.
I wonder what point you are trying to make, are you trying to say that Bioware games have great replayability because you yourself have played them more than once? You yourself have played many Bioware games more than once. Bravo. I played Golden Sun: The Lost Age several times. I've played Sly Cooper 1 and 2 several times each. I've probably played Pokemon Blue more times than you have ever played any Bioware game at all. Just because I've played a game more than once doesn't mean the game has a ton of replayability and the same goes for you.
True, but your basic point is what he was saying more or less. On a related note Bioware released some interesting things about Mass Effect 2 ( I think it was ME2 anyway) that showed information gained through their Cerebral Network, showing a breakdown of the percentages on how the typcial gamer played their games. It was a pretty high percentage that played through more than once, as well as overwhelming numbers who didn't skip any dialogue during their play-through(s).
1) This is about Dragon Age, not Mass Effect.
2) People have played through Final Fantasy games many times through, they have played through Call of Duty games many times through, they have played through many games many times through. I really don't see any point you are trying to make.
Wasn't making a point actually just sharing info, what point would I have to make? I feel no need to defend Bioware, a decent Dev studio needs no defense.
@(1)"Bioware games have great replayability because you yourself have played them more than once? You yourself have played many Bioware games more than once"
^^Copied directly from your post^^ Doesn't seem to be only about DA to me.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
Apparently art is measured in a scientific way and thus not subjective.
What the hell are some people smoking? o_O
Back OT: DA:O and DA2 both have a different take on things which is primary why DA2 was so polarising.
DA:O is your classic 'bad things are happening and YOU are the ONLY ONE that can stop it' hero plot/game.
DA2 is a 'you are a normal person in a city that's going to hell in a hand basket' type plot/game.
Execution-wise DA:O was better but thought DA2 did some stuff that BW haven't done before and while it isn't a perfect game it does show BW will give something new a shot.
Excited about TOR regardless though.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Perhaps I was hasty in that sentence. The insistance of considering aesthetics, aka. art, as subjective and subjective only, boils my blood. Subjective is the realm of the individual and his or her opinion.
To put the discussion more on topic; While I hate World of Warcraft as a mmorpg, I do recognize the very well put together qualities of the game as is the case with Bioware's DA.O and DA2. Bioware has created quite a few notable titles, yet lately thru either time or money or elements out of their control, or for that matter completely in their control, they have gotten sloppy. DA2 is no where near what DA.O is. Nor is DA.O anywhere near where Baldur's Gate was. Some of that can be attributed to the new-ness of a title and its sequels. Some.
I do like this. one guy says he enjoyed Dragon age and hopes ToR will do well as well, then instead of being glad someone enjoys something, we have to go into a debate about wether the game has a good story based on some scientific facts or something and thus get into a fight over whether art is subjective or not.
personally I'm glad Nomss enjoyed the game and had fun. After all, thats what games are about having fun and if a Bioware game allowed him to have a good time for just a little while that is all thats important.
Games are an business but at least this business gives you something you'll remember. Characters, stories, and emotions. Sometimes i think people run too high trying to pull apart everything.
Nomss said the story was superb. I'm sure this is his opinion of the game. Who cares about wether it's better then books movies or what not. This is a level scale. Sure people might have disagreements over whats good, but thats opinion based. To him he felt the story was well done and deserved the place of superb. I happen to agree with him on this as well.
The only thing we can hope for is for at least some people to get the same feeling out of an MMO, I'm certainly hoping so because i've yet to get a feeling of being attached to any character since my barb shaman in EQ and that was only because i'd played her for 4.3 years.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
And here I thought games were about fun. Its when companies forget that its about fun and run only like its for business that I get worried.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Sure game companies are in business. They do have to make money to continue. But fun should come first, then profit. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. As Bioware puts fun first, your right we dont have to worry. I played the hell out of DA.O to me it was fun. But worry creeps in when I attempted to play DA2.
Sure i can undestand that. i'd prefer companies always put fun before money. They rarely do that. Lets hope Bioware does.
I can't really comment on DA2 but i can take a few topics i saw that were problems in the game
First off people said they hated that everything is copy and pasted (the tell tale signs of a rushed game)
What we have heard from the devs is that each of the 17 worlds are handcrafted. Thus not copy and pasted
Second was the story element. Never really going anywhere (or at least i think that was the problem)
This is what happens when you pick a guy that is not the savior of the world. He/she mills around does random quests, goes to arenas, never really getting to god like status. We know that in SW;ToR your not going to be the run of the mill person in the personal story. You are the center of it for the duration of the personal story. No idea how the rest of the game works though in this respect
Thirdly i think people got tired of seeing Kirkwell all the time. We know there are 17 planets each with different systems.
Finally and the biggest thing is the rush feel. I think this is largely due to them only having DA2 in production for about 2 years, Bioware games i feel need about twice that amount of time. SW:ToR on the other hand has and continues to be in production for 5 to 6 years now. Lots more time
I'm not trying to say that SW;ToR will be good and i can understand the worry if you didn't care for DA2. However i do look at BIoware's history and see a much better outlook in this case. It seems they got all the good people from BIoware on SW;ToR and are taking it slow trying to make a big game. Bioware has also wanted to make an MMO since the days of NeverWinter Nights. So i'm getting the feeling they want this one to be really well done.
In the end if you do have worries its always best to get both customer and critic reviews then see videos of it yourself and decide then if you want to plop down the X amount of dollars, euros or whatever other curriency is needed to buy the game for yourself.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
It took you 8 years of study at a university to not understand that art is completely subjective? Even after 5 years of apprenticeship you still did not understand? I would feel sorry for the time and money you wasted, but you seem to have done it willingly, so it is your fault.
Let me ask you this, if people do not like an artists work, who buys it? Oh right, you answered that, it hangs on a frig somewhere. In order for art, in any form, to be "good" it has to be liked, therefore it is up to the subjective whims of the public at large. I have seen many "Master Peices" that in my opinion were worth less than than a role of gaudy wallpaper and at the same time critically denounced art (It was so uninspired!) that was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. I have read poems that were acclaimed to be some of the best in the world that was little more than drivel and read the work of a ten year old that made me weep.
I am sorry that your 8 years of university study and 5 years of glass blowing apprentiseship blinded you to the real truth. Art IS in the eye of the beholder and no "expert" alive today can tell me what good art is. I get to make that decision, not them. The artist that does not understand this simple truth will always be a failure.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
No, it is because the company is changing in an effort to get more of the mainstream.
It's the same reason ME2 was RPG lite with all the RPG character control depth thrown out in favour of making an interacitve movie.
The Bioware that made all those great games years ago no longer exists in philosophy or make up, especially under the yoke of EA.
Thank god it seems that Bethesda and others are staying with us RPGers tbh.
Two completely different studios did those games, and a completely different studio is doing SWTOR. ME2 was also one of the greatest games of all time, and you could micromanage your team if you really wanted to.
Bethesda has thrown out plenty of terrible games with their name attached to it and yet, the one game that BioWare doesn't completely knock out of the park suddenly means the entire company is in steep decline? Ridiculous if you ask me.
Bethesda games have not dumbed down? Oblivion was a husk of a game with no soul what so ever. Sure DA 2 was a dissapointment and The Witcher 2 utterly nuked it as this years best RPG but Bioware are still the established masters. Everyone is entitled to 1 off day, they claim they have heard the feedback and will adjust, apparently even EA are saying that it was their fault for rushing it so hopefully they learned.
But DA 1 was fantastic, best rpg of its year and one of the best since the golden age of Baldurs gate 2/
Just dodge the sequel and stay happy.
Really? I thought the story was really generic. It's more or less the same as all classic fantasy/Bioware stories. The only character I liked was Morrigan. The morale decisions were a joke, and the only ones that mattered were the 3 or so you make at the very end. The world just didn't grab me. Maybe I've just played too many Bioware games, they all start to play the same.
Uh yeah, no. DA was a slightly above average RPG at best. It was far too generic to call the best of anything.
Ive read several Star Wars novels (dated after the movies).
What I found was that some were good, and some were bad. I then payed attention to the author of the book, and found that I did not like certain writers.
Each class in SWTOR has their own writer, so you may that find you like some storylines of a class, but not others.
On a side note, DA2 is not a bad game. Its below par of what Bioware normally puts out, but it is still a good game. DAO set the bar way way high, so a sequel would be hard to out do it. I would of prefered in DA2 that they continue the storyline of the hero from Origins. They also got lazy with repeating the same map areas over and over.
Yeah plenty terible games. Daggerfall Battlspire,morrorwind,oblivion. Sure i see what u mean...
I disagree - I mean, I think that's part of the problem, but with DA2 specifically, the bit of dumbing down wasn't nearly as bad as the sheer lack of content compared to DA:O. I couldn't believe the entire game takes place in Kirkwall, which wasn't even as big or as detailed as Denerim. I couldn't believe every interior I went into looked like the same three places over and over.
They cut some major corners content-wise, and I can only hope it's because they're putting all their real resources into SWTOR.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I wouldn't mind seeing what CD Projekt Red could come up with for a MMO. Considering they, figuratively speaking of course, ripped out Bioware's still beating heart, took a bite out of it, curbstomped their head to the pavement, and had a good wank over its steaming corpse with The Witcher 2, expanding on that world might be interesting. However, CDPR is still a young company, so I don't think they'd risk an MMO venture yet, since they've taken Bioware's single player mantle away with a cocky grin.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Maybe their cutscenes do, but their cutscenes didn't make Dragon Age's very generic story much better. I found reading text in Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age much better. Probably because the story was better. I also liked the cutscenes in FFIX (only FF I played besides the DS version of IV) much better than Dragon Age's. Probably because they were telling the story much more cinematically than Dragon Age's.
The only thing I found that Dragon Age's cutscenes do better to tell a story than any other game I've played is that they offer "choice". Although I have to say that the "choice" that Dragon Age offered was little more than an illusion considering no matter how many times I play through the game I will be doing the same quests no matter what with very little variation.
Honestly i think Bioware games have the worst replayabilty of all the market. So your comment is a bit funny to me.
I don't think i ever played their game twice except for Baldur gate, and its not because i never tryed.
I just never felt as replaying the same story with an other angle to be even attractive honeslty; i think each class should have his very own story to have anything close to "replayabilty".
At least a totally different twist, in bioware game its just like looking at the same gem ffrom different facette. Somehow it just isn't attractive. I just don't think its even "realistic", witness from a same event won't ever describe other facette of the same story in fact, never. This is just the theory, but in facts its not what happen. Its just a lot more subtile, the same event shared by many witness will lead in totally diferent story with only few common key aspects, but whatever.
Honeslt the guys at Bioware should put a much stronger twist to make replayabilty better, even if they need to change the story quiet a bit. Keeping exactly the same story is just bad all over to me. If you don't beleive me go talk with a police inspector about this and see what he will teach you about this aspect. Sometime theories well are just theories, they lack a lot of things.
And here is where experiences differ and therefore opinions differ. I don't think there is a single BioWare game that I haven't played at least four times and a couple that I have played a dozen times or more.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
I wonder what point you are trying to make, are you trying to say that Bioware games have great replayability because you yourself have played them more than once? You yourself have played many Bioware games more than once. Bravo. I played Golden Sun: The Lost Age several times. I've played Sly Cooper 1 and 2 several times each. I've probably played Pokemon Blue more times than you have ever played any Bioware game at all. Just because I've played a game more than once doesn't mean the game has a ton of replayability and the same goes for you.
He's trying to say that experiences and opinions differ.
The post he quotes bases the opinion that Bioware games have the worst replayability on his own experiences.
So we've got one negative experience.
He then puts his own positive experience against that ( meaning one positive and one negative experience total ) and concludes that their experiences and thus opinions differ.
Which I'd say is about as valid a conclusion as you can get?
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
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True, but your basic point is what he was saying more or less. On a related note Bioware released some interesting things about Mass Effect 2 ( I think it was ME2 anyway) that showed information gained through their Cerebral Network, showing a breakdown of the percentages on how the typcial gamer played their games. It was a pretty high percentage that played through more than once, as well as overwhelming numbers who didn't skip any dialogue during their play-through(s).
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
1) This is about Dragon Age, not Mass Effect.
2) People have played through Final Fantasy games many times through, they have played through Call of Duty games many times through, they have played through many games many times through. I really don't see any point you are trying to make.
Wasn't making a point actually just sharing info, what point would I have to make? I feel no need to defend Bioware, a decent Dev studio needs no defense.
@(1) "Bioware games have great replayability because you yourself have played them more than once? You yourself have played many Bioware games more than once"
^^Copied directly from your post^^ Doesn't seem to be only about DA to me.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson