Yeah, the turret opera was pretty great, it's true.
In general I'm not too negatively affected by spoilers, so modding isn't the issue. But I've been wrestling with that realization that it'll all be over soon (at least, once the fanfic is done. Heh.) and it's not an easy thing to process.
You know, I almost put my Skyrim spouse too until I realized that the character I liked so much is almost entirely made up in my head from the few sentences they say in game. :/
I sometimes wish that Bethsda would take a page out of Bioware's book for interesting, engaging companions. If it meant they had to trim a bit off the size of their world, so be it.
Yeah, that's really the glaring weak point at this stage. The NPCs don't do a very good job of being reactive to what you do except for a very limited dialogue set. I mean, I was Archmage of the Mage College and Ferengar was still telling me I should "join the mage college".
They could perhaps have limited the number of people you can potentially marry, but increased the available dialogue options for it?
I still consider BioWare the leader in personal relationship building, but Skyrim set a few new benchmarks elsewhere. But I still loved my lizardy husband, even if he's not much of a conversationalist. I mean come on, he makes me pies. ;)
Really! You didn't like DA2? I started it last Friday and was very impressed with the writing (as I mentioned in a recent post). I liked the vast feel of Kirkwall (in games cities tend to look tiny), too. As for the 'misery' part - though I didn't perceive it as such - I could say the aftertaste was mostly gratifying.
Though I do agree that the minor quests are somewhat inane, and I wasn't at all impressed when I realised that all caves, mansions, etc. looked the same. :}
I've been neglecting ME fandom this year. Too little time, too many things to do. But that might change with ME3. :D
Speaking of lack of time, though, I've no idea when I'll feel brave enough to tackle Skyrim. The mention of 100+ hours was downright scary, but more or less typical of TES games.
Don't get me wrong, I wanted to love DA2. And there are parts of it I did love. The character interaction with your party was top-notch.
How far are you in the main plot? Because it wasn't until the third act that the game completely lost me. I thought the arishok was a great antagonist. But you could remove Hawke entirely from the third act and it would change nothing. It's just a long relentless string of failure and awfulness, and I was so damn tired of it I checked out emotionally. I actually laughed when I saw Hawke's mother's eventual fate, because it was such a blatant, over the top piece of sick drama-mongering. A fate, by the way, about which you can no nothing at allI don't want to spoil things if you haven't finished the game... but I supported the mages all the way through (being a mage myself), and there were things that happened that made me facepalm so hard it was heard in Asia. Characters acting like inveterate morons, Hawke being useless to affect anything even when I the player had figured something out, all so the
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this last point like a million billion times!! There can be a miserable ending as an option, plenty of games have done that, while giving the option - if the player 'works' hard enough - to get a good, or at least not-horrible ending. Suikoden 2 springs to mind... Dragon Age 2, not so much...
It makes a bit more sense now. On my part, I was actually kind of indifferent when I started, with low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised by the way the game progressed. But I think you make a point, because I'm JUST at the beginning of Act 3, without having progressed the main plot at all. So it may well go downhill from here. :)
Again, on the misery part. I suppose it may partly be subjective. I like tragedy... might be a cultural thing (Greeks have loved tragedies for the last two and a half thousand years! :p). There is a sense of catharsis which is hard to describe, but roughly it's this: I do not get depressed when terrible things happen to characters I have grown fond of. There is just a surge of emotion whose after taste is mostly positive, because of me having experienced it in the first place. I don't know if that makes any sense!
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In general I'm not too negatively affected by spoilers, so modding isn't the issue. But I've been wrestling with that realization that it'll all be over soon (at least, once the fanfic is done. Heh.) and it's not an easy thing to process.
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I sometimes wish that Bethsda would take a page out of Bioware's book for interesting, engaging companions. If it meant they had to trim a bit off the size of their world, so be it.
Reply
They could perhaps have limited the number of people you can potentially marry, but increased the available dialogue options for it?
I still consider BioWare the leader in personal relationship building, but Skyrim set a few new benchmarks elsewhere. But I still loved my lizardy husband, even if he's not much of a conversationalist. I mean come on, he makes me pies. ;)
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Though I do agree that the minor quests are somewhat inane, and I wasn't at all impressed when I realised that all caves, mansions, etc. looked the same. :}
I've been neglecting ME fandom this year. Too little time, too many things to do. But that might change with ME3. :D
Speaking of lack of time, though, I've no idea when I'll feel brave enough to tackle Skyrim. The mention of 100+ hours was downright scary, but more or less typical of TES games.
Reply
How far are you in the main plot? Because it wasn't until the third act that the game completely lost me. I thought the arishok was a great antagonist. But you could remove Hawke entirely from the third act and it would change nothing. It's just a long relentless string of failure and awfulness, and I was so damn tired of it I checked out emotionally. I actually laughed when I saw Hawke's mother's eventual fate, because it was such a blatant, over the top piece of sick drama-mongering. A fate, by the way, about which you can no nothing at allI don't want to spoil things if you haven't finished the game... but I supported the mages all the way through (being a mage myself), and there were things that happened that made me facepalm so hard it was heard in Asia. Characters acting like inveterate morons, Hawke being useless to affect anything even when I the player had figured something out, all so the ( ... )
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Again, on the misery part. I suppose it may partly be subjective. I like tragedy... might be a cultural thing (Greeks have loved tragedies for the last two and a half thousand years! :p). There is a sense of catharsis which is hard to describe, but roughly it's this: I do not get depressed when terrible things happen to characters I have grown fond of. There is just a surge of emotion whose after taste is mostly positive, because of me having experienced it in the first place. I don't know if that makes any sense!
Reply
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