Dragon Age: Origins Expansion Pack 'Awakening' Announced

[StrangerGuy]

I personally think the game was not that great and overrated and a real tedium to play, but considering how starved the genre is over the past decade any polished turd with heavy marketing will be instantly called the "best RPG ever".

Last of that was Oblivion. People dare call that a 10/10 game? Hint: If you need mods to make a game somewhat enjoyable it means the unmodded version suck ass.

 

[rchiu]

I personally think the game was not that great and overrated and a real tedium to play, but considering how starved the genre is over the past decade any polished turd with heavy marketing will be instantly called the "best RPG ever".

Last of that was Oblivion. People dare call that a 10/10 game? Hint: If you need mods to make a game somewhat enjoyable it means the unmodded version suck ass.

If any crowd can see past heavy marketing, it'd be the RPG gamers. Most RPG gamers are old school and don't get fazed by fancy graphic and big marketing campaign, but instead look for depth in story and rich world you can explore. I'd say I am a typical RPG gamer with ~20+ years of gaming experiences. I can see through all the marketing stuff out there with my MBA degree and 10+ years of consulting work experience, and I still think Dragon Age is one of the best RPG games in years, along with the Oblivion series (yeah I played it since Daggerfall time)

If you cannot appreicate the vast world and the rich graphic in Oblivion, even the unmodded version, I guess you can go back to your 3rd person shooters or whatever else that gives you satisfaction and don't bash things you don't understand.

 

[Craig234]

nickel and dime nickel and dime nickel and dime

Your post and your name fit.

 

[Dumac]

If you cannot appreicate the vast world and the rich graphic in Oblivion, even the unmodded version, I guess you can go back to your 3rd person shooters or whatever else that gives you satisfaction and don't bash things you don't understand.

Way to sound like an ignorant, smug prick. I've enjoyed TES since Arena, and I say that Oblivion was a crappy step towards mindless drivel. The game was unenjoyable without heavily modding every inch. While I have put hundreds of hours into Morrowind, I couldn't even bother to play Oblivion more than a few days.

You say don't bash what you don't understand, but there is little to understand in Oblivion. A boring environment, with boring characters, lore, quests, and shitty dialog does not make a good RPG, despite the mundane, but "vast" world and the "rich graphic". Oblivion was worthless apart from the "ooo pretty" factor.

Thank god that Bethesda supports mods. With some help from the creative community, I was almost able to get my money's worth out of the game.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Ugh, you say tomayto, I saw tomahto. Everybody likes different things.

 

[masterxfob]

had a bit of fun with this, but have yet to finish it. it's enjoyable, but it's no baldur's gate. i'll probably be installin it again very soon

 

[rchiu]

Way to sound like an ignorant, smug prick. I've enjoyed TES since Arena, and I say that Oblivion was a crappy step towards mindless drivel. The game was unenjoyable without heavily modding every inch. While I have put hundreds of hours into Morrowind, I couldn't even bother to play Oblivion more than a few days.

You say don't bash what you don't understand, but there is little to understand in Oblivion. A boring environment, with boring characters, lore, quests, and shitty dialog does not make a good RPG, despite the mundane, but "vast" world and the "rich graphic". Oblivion was worthless apart from the "ooo pretty" factor.

Thank god that Bethesda supports mods. With some help from the creative community, I was almost able to get my money's worth out of the game.

Heh I know there are a small bunch of you Morrowind is awesome and Oblivion is crap crowd but the fact is you people are the small minority. Just read reviews from users who actually played the game and you'd realize who is the ignorant smug prick with opinion shared by very small percentage of those who played the game.

 

[exar333]

Heh I know there are a small bunch of you Morrowind is awesome and Oblivion is crap crowd but the fact is you people are the small minority. Just read reviews from users who actually played the game and you'd realize who is the ignorant smug prick with opinion shared by very small percentage of those who played the game.

+1. Both were great games, but many things where much improved in Oblivion. Not to derail the thread, but it was a great RPG.

DA expansion should be awesome. Assuming it has plenty of quests, new characters, and fresh areas to explore, bring it on.

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

Way to sound like an ignorant, smug prick. I've enjoyed TES since Arena, and I say that Oblivion was a crappy step towards mindless drivel. The game was unenjoyable without heavily modding every inch. While I have put hundreds of hours into Morrowind, I couldn't even bother to play Oblivion more than a few days.

You say don't bash what you don't understand, but there is little to understand in Oblivion. A boring environment, with boring characters, lore, quests, and shitty dialog does not make a good RPG, despite the mundane, but "vast" world and the "rich graphic". Oblivion was worthless apart from the "ooo pretty" factor.

Thank god that Bethesda supports mods. With some help from the creative community, I was almost able to get my money's worth out of the game.

Definitely agree with this. Oblivion was a big snoozefest and I never understood the critical BJ it got. It was more like a neverending tech demo than a real game.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Jeeze, you guys talk about Morrowind like it didn't have the exact same problem of being impossible to enjoy without heavy modding. Morrowind's game mechanics were fundamentally broken seven different ways to Sunday. Making a giant world to explore falls flat on it's face when your game mechanics ensure a player can essentially be god before leaving the first city.

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

Jeeze, you guys talk about Morrowind like it didn't have the exact same problem of being impossible to enjoy without heavy modding. Morrowind's game mechanics were fundamentally broken seven different ways to Sunday. Making a giant world to explore falls flat on it's face when your game mechanics ensure a player can essentially be god before leaving the first city.

For what it's worth, I hated Morrowind too.

Sorry to further derail this Dragon Age thread. I've played a little of it and like it, but haven't gotten far enough to make any appreciable comment on the expansion pack. Seems like this isn't enough time for players to be able to fully digest the original release, but it doesn't seem like a problem to me unless they're way overcharging for the amount of additional content.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Holy fuck, it's called an opinion. STFU about Oblivion and stop derailing this thread.

 

[homercles337]

Way to sound like an ignorant, smug prick. I've enjoyed TES since Arena, and I say that Oblivion was a crappy step towards mindless drivel. The game was unenjoyable without heavily modding every inch. While I have put hundreds of hours into Morrowind, I couldn't even bother to play Oblivion more than a few days.

Ahhh, i also started with Arena. I agree with you about Oblivion being a step in the wrong direction, but i played the shit out of it still. Not nearly as enjoyable as Morrowind though.

 

[AzN]

Way to sound like an ignorant, smug prick. I've enjoyed TES since Arena, and I say that Oblivion was a crappy step towards mindless drivel. The game was unenjoyable without heavily modding every inch. While I have put hundreds of hours into Morrowind, I couldn't even bother to play Oblivion more than a few days.

You say don't bash what you don't understand, but there is little to understand in Oblivion. A boring environment, with boring characters, lore, quests, and shitty dialog does not make a good RPG, despite the mundane, but "vast" world and the "rich graphic". Oblivion was worthless apart from the "ooo pretty" factor.

Thank god that Bethesda supports mods. With some help from the creative community, I was almost able to get my money's worth out of the game.

oblivion and morrowind is exactly what you described but fallout was much better from Bethesda.

dragon age is that much more though. I enjoyed it more than fallout 3. Probably the best game to come out in the last few years.

 

[Feneant2]

Lots of heated opinions and arguments considering we know next to nothing about the product.

It's easy for me, I set up a price poing for any game I will consider. 0.50$ an hour is what I consider an acceptable price for a game. I don't do online multiplayer either on pc or console so needless to say I've been buying a LOT less games.

I never got the companies... they would be able to sell so many more games if they simply lowered the price. Wouldn't it be better for them to sell a million games at 40$ than half a million at 60$? Look at places like Steam, Direct2Drive, GoG, they had all sorts of Christmas offers and I found myself buying about a dozen PC games because the prices were finally ones I'd consider paying!

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

Lots of heated opinions and arguments considering we know next to nothing about the product.

It's easy for me, I set up a price poing for any game I will consider. 0.50$ an hour is what I consider an acceptable price for a game. I don't do online multiplayer either on pc or console so needless to say I've been buying a LOT less games.

I never got the companies... they would be able to sell so many more games if they simply lowered the price. Wouldn't it be better for them to sell a million games at 40$ than half a million at 60$? Look at places like Steam, Direct2Drive, GoG, they had all sorts of Christmas offers and I found myself buying about a dozen PC games because the prices were finally ones I'd consider paying!

That sounds reasonable until you consider that you'd be demanding 80-120 hours of gameplay from new releases. And without multiplayer? Tall order. But that does seem like a good standard for older games and sales. You may have to wait quite a while for something like Dragon Age + expansion to satisfy your requirement, though.

 

[JoshGuru7]

It's easy for me, I set up a price poing for any game I will consider. 0.50$ an hour is what I consider an acceptable price for a game. I don't do online multiplayer either on pc or console so needless to say I've been buying a LOT less games.

While I like the thinking behind a logical approach like this, you may also want to consider "enjoyment" as a scale factor. Not all entertainment hours are created equally and I suspect that you may prefer 40 hours of *really* fun gameplay over 60 hours of mediocre gameplay. This is a real issue because there's a tradeoff between amount of content and quality of content, and often the heavily scripted and well produced games can be on the short side (6 hours MW2 singleplayer) while you can get huge hours out of less polished titles.

Perhaps something like Price = 0.5*FunFactor*Content, where FunFactor ranges from 0-10. The lower limit on that range is set by the fact that you wouldn't pay anything for a terrible game regardless of length, and the upper limit is roughly calibrated to be equal to seeing a good movie in the theater.

Back on topic, one of the reasons why I really liked Dragon Age was that I scored it highly on both content quantity and content quality. It felt like a very well produced game (polished, tons of voice acting, immense backstory/codex), but at the same time contained a lot of gameplay content. I will probably buy the expansion in March at the same time as the new DLC and use that an excuse to play through the game from the beggining again as a dual-wield momentum rogue.

 

[Arglebargle]

Liking a game, and the game being well made are not synonymous.

My scale for 'gaming per hour' value is that it has to be better than the cost per hour of a matinee movie. Although I do tend to play slow and do all the extra bits.

 

[mindcycle]

Perhaps something like Price = 0.5*FunFactor*Content, where FunFactor ranges from 0-10. The lower limit on that range is set by the fact that you wouldn't pay anything for a terrible game regardless of length, and the upper limit is roughly calibrated to be equal to seeing a good movie in the theater.

The main problem I see with that approach is you won't be able to determine the fun factor until after you purchase and play the game. If you had a demo to try you might be able to determine this before you make the purchase, but unfortunately, we don't get many demo's on the PC side anymore.

I actually use the fun factor rating approach to purchase games for my PS3, especially for PSN games. PSN games almost always have a demo, and even regular releases tend to have a demo to try before the release date or shortly thereafter. Years ago I used to make PC game purchases based off demo discs from game magazines or shareware copies. Nowadays though, it seems like more often than not you're purchasing a non-refundable item that may or may not suck ass based off nothing but reviews and video clips/trailers.

 

[Dumac]

oblivion and morrowind is exactly what you described but fallout was much better from Bethesda.

dragon age is that much more though. I enjoyed it more than fallout 3. Probably the best game to come out in the last few years.

I did enjoy DA:O quite a bunch, which is why I am more excited than cynical about the announced expansion. Plus, I prefer expansions to tiny DLC content anyway.

 

[Dumac]

Holy fuck, it's called an opinion. STFU about Oblivion and stop derailing this thread.

Whoops. I just found Rchiu's comment rather presumptuous. Didn't mean to derail the thread.

 

[Dumac]

While I like the thinking behind a logical approach like this, you may also want to consider "enjoyment" as a scale factor. Not all entertainment hours are created equally and I suspect that you may prefer 40 hours of *really* fun gameplay over 60 hours of mediocre gameplay. This is a real issue because there's a tradeoff between amount of content and quality of content, and often the heavily scripted and well produced games can be on the short side (6 hours MW2 singleplayer) while you can get huge hours out of less polished titles.

Perhaps something like Price = 0.5*FunFactor*Content, where FunFactor ranges from 0-10. The lower limit on that range is set by the fact that you wouldn't pay anything for a terrible game regardless of length, and the upper limit is roughly calibrated to be equal to seeing a good movie in the theater.

Back on topic, one of the reasons why I really liked Dragon Age was that I scored it highly on both content quantity and content quality. It felt like a very well produced game (polished, tons of voice acting, immense backstory/codex), but at the same time contained a lot of gameplay content. I will probably buy the expansion in March at the same time as the new DLC and use that an excuse to play through the game from the beggining again as a dual-wield momentum rogue.

This. While I try to get a 1 dollar:1 hour ratio (which Dragon age actually exceeded) from games, sometimes the fun factor and general quality of the game make it worth making an exception.

Dragon Age is special in that not only was the content enjoyable and high quality, but there is also lots of it.

 

[waggy]

just finished it! not a bad game. but not amazing either. it felt way to linear for me.

really can't say if i will pick up the expansion since we don't know anything about it yet.

 

[Craig234]

Lots of heated opinions and arguments considering we know next to nothing about the product.

It's easy for me, I set up a price poing for any game I will consider. 0.50$ an hour is what I consider an acceptable price for a game. I don't do online multiplayer either on pc or console so needless to say I've been buying a LOT less games.

I never got the companies... they would be able to sell so many more games if they simply lowered the price. Wouldn't it be better for them to sell a million games at 40$ than half a million at 60$? Look at places like Steam, Direct2Drive, GoG, they had all sorts of Christmas offers and I found myself buying about a dozen PC games because the prices were finally ones I'd consider paying!

One thing to remember is people have only so much time, and wen tey're rational, they only buy so many games, and lowering the price just means less money for the games.

But we aren't rational on Steam. We buy games we'll never play, we buy games we already have. In the last several I had several purchase clicks say 'you already own this' ON STEAM (uninstalled).

What's the difference? Two things at least.

One is the lack of resale on steam allowing a price cut. Another is the limited time sale, not a price cut.

 

[DangerAardvark]

Wow. $90 jst to play the game and the expansion pack? I was planning on buying this game soon, but I will wait until the price drops quite a bit. Maybe $30 for the set would be good enough for me to bite.

I paid $60 for the special edition and it was well worth it. Over 80 hrs on the first playthrough with a shitload of replayability. Oh yeah, and the ending didn't suck. That alone was worth it.