Which one is better? Personally, I was addicted to Dragon Age: Origins, but couldn't even bring myself to bother finishing Dragon Age 2.
It comes down to personal preference, though I'm sure they'll be posts here going on about how DA2 is utter crap, etc. I think Origins is the better game, though if BioWare had been allowed to give DA2 the development time it deserved, I'm sure I'd have a harder time picking the better game. Gruedragon (talk) 18:33, July 20, 2011 (UTC)
As a player coming into both of these games at the same time (A friend bought both for me when he came to visit), DA2 is vastly superior, at least in "fun" value. I did play Origins first, and I didn't even beat it. I've yet to actually go back to Origins. But DA2's combat is more fun, the menus and tactics are easier to handle, and there's so much I've yet to explore. I've heard a lot of naysaying on DA2 before I played it but frankly, all the complaints are things I actually like. Oh well. - Vanguard 18:37, July 20, 2011 (UTC)
Oh it's going to get nasty in here.
For me DA:O wins in terms of customizability, game immersion, replay value, characters (if only because of Ogren and Sten) and all round roll play value.
DA:2 has graphics, combat, Varric, Isabella's cleavage and Hawke's Epic Beard of Awesomeness. Andy the Black (talk) 19:08, July 20, 2011 (UTC)
What's that we've opened? A can of... worms, is it? Yup, can of worms.
I had some free time recently, and wanted to replay a game from my collection. Without any hesitation, I went back to Origins. I don't imagine I'd ever replay DA2 unless they release some substantial DLC that can only be played during Act 1, Act 2 etc rather than on the post-game save. What does that tell you?
Most of all, I desperately wish that I was taking my City Elf Warden to go find out whatever is up at the Darkspawn prison in Legacy, using the DA:O game engine. NickyStuu (talk) 19:41, July 20, 2011 (UTC)NickyStuu
DA:O is like windows, it is old school and has all the goodies in it that most of us like. DA2 is like a mac, it is simple to use and has good cheap fun. As for me I liked both of them. I beat both of them twice, but I'm doing a thrid playthrough of DA2 because it is easier to play. --Mastrmoon (talk) 20:26, July 20, 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, this is a pissing contest a lot of people won't be interested in revisiting. The only thing I seem to be leaning towards regarding the two games now, is that both seem to be made for different audiences. I don't think that was entirely intentional, but that's clearly what happened. If I had a guess, I'd say only about 20-30% of the people who played Origins liked DA2 either more or equally. The rest vary trending down, drastically in most cases. New gamers to the series, as mentioned above by one of you, seem to like DA2 more by a wider margin, but I can't tell percentages really as there were not many new gamers coming in obviously as the game has not sold well compared to Origins. Without picking a side, because at this point who cares, it's an interesting situation to say the least. I find myself watching Bioware now with a bit of morbid fascination, wondering how they'll try to extricate themselves from all of this. The Grey Unknown (talk) 23:39, July 20, 2011 (UTC)
It's not even a fair comparison really. DA2 is not, by itself, a bad game. Comparing it to Orgins is like comparing space invaders to X-Wing vs Tie Fighter (or I'd imagine so, I'm not actually a fan of the X-Wing, etc games) except that in this case it's the older game that has the advantages since so much more hard work, money and love was poured into it. Origins is a huge and highly replayable game with so many variables that you can play it dozens of times and still find something new. As if that wasn't enough there's also a construction kit allowing players to create their own content. DA2 on the other hand is full of false choices and impossible to play more than once without feeling disappointment that all your attempts to do things differently are having the exact same results.
Combat, there's definitely a good argument that DA2 made some advances in that, but it also made several steps in the wrong direction too. Start with the obvious, the waves. I've yet to come across any positive reactions to the waves. Certainly the idea has merit, in some situations it could make a lot of sense if executed correctly. In some areas it even is, you see the next wave coming out of doorways or jumping off ledges where it makes sense rather than appearing out of thin air or jumping out of their friends left ear. But not only is it badly implemented, it's over-used. It would be a good occasional alternative. Sometimes you have tough enemies that take a lot of work to kill. Sometimes you face larger numbers of weaker enemies. Sometimes you face small numbers of enemies who come in waves. Variety is almost never a bad thing. Then there's the more fast paced combat... certainly it's more appealing to many gamers, but I still feel that they could have reached a better compromise between fast paced and tactical. If it had just been that though, it wouldn't rank as a particularly high complaint.
The inventory in DA2 is just plain awful. Look at Origins. Lots of variety, every item has unique name and flavour, usually with some text on it, and it's easy to tell items apart. About the only good thing DA2 added was the "mark as junk" and "sell all junk" options. Even the non-junk items are bland, most of them having indistinguishable names so you have to check the stats of every item individually, and the inconsistent and meaningless star system doesn't help (perhaps it's been fixed by now though, I'm not sure)
Origins had replay value, it had depth and it felt like something the developers had poured their hearts and souls into making. Origins is a work of art. DA2 was shallow, disappointing and felt like a quick attempt at cashing in on the success of Origins. Rayvio (talk)
I've been thinking about this issue of "replayability" - as raised by @Rayvio and a couple of other people on this thread. Now I love Origins, and I'm currently on my fifth full replay. But from Bioware's / EA's perspective, they don't make any more money out of me each time I play it. I bought Origins and paid for it once, played it five times. I bought DA2 and paid for it once, but only played it once. Same outcome for the publisher either way. It's not like a publisher could charge five times more for Origins, so what's the incentive in investing all of that money in a game with massive replayability? I suppose the counter-argument to that is that a well-made game with large replay value will attract more initial buyers by word of mouth spreading and then dedicated fans will get sucked into buying DLC, but presumably (given these are commercial organisations) a focus on depth and replayability is quite low on their list of priorities? NickyStuu (talk) 10:30, July 21, 2011 (UTC)NickyStuu
- You're only partially right, hitting on it at the end a bit more. True we only pay once, or most of us did. I bought it twice, once for console, once for PC. But remember this all important part. The high replayability of origins is what has saved DA2 financially. Without the large number of us who played DAO so many times and loved it, thus blindly buying into the "sequel" without waiting, DA2 would have been a catastrophic failure. Without the pre-orders, upwards of 700,000 by some reports, though probably a little closer to 500,000 IMO, and all Origin lovers obviously, DA2 honestly would not have sold enough to warrant a third game. We'd be done, and even more disappointed no doubt. So replayability is actually pretty important, but more so for what follows the game we are playing, than for that game itself. Financially. And 90% of a game's money is made within the first few months of release, so a stellar reputation, which leads to greater initial sales, is actually crucial. Replayability is pretty crucial in building that reputation, especially for an RPG style game. Bioware knows this, and has made most of their games in this way intentionally. So it's actually, usually, pretty high up on their list of priorities I would think. It's why they are freaking a bit with all this DLC hype and damage control post DA2. Because they know the reputation has taken a huge hit here, and that DA3 will pay for it as a result. Replayability is a big part of that. The Grey Unknown (talk) 11:55, July 21, 2011 (UTC)
The Grey Unknown hit it dead on. Especially now with companies so devoted to making extra cash out of DLC. Put it this way... you bought Game A over a year ago and still play it fairly regularly. you bought Game B around the same time but played it once and then never again. Game A and Game B both release DLC, which will you buy? When it comes to sequels, which will you buy? When it comes to new titles from the same developers which would you be more likely to buy?
BioWare's success is built upon their reputation. Baldur's Gate remains to this day one of the most popular RPG series in gaming history. Knights Of The Old Republic is considered one of the most successful Star Wars games. Mass Effect is pretty much THE sci-fi RPG. As a result the company have many fans eager for their next games, confident that they will be every bit as good as the last. Or at least, that used to be the case. Now the fans are a little more cautious, a little more sceptical. Some of us are hoping the DLC will fix things. Some of us don't think a simple DLC can do that much or that we shouldn't have to pay for such a fix. Some of us hope that the next Dragon Age game will be a return to form. Some of us have given up on BioWare altogether (but would probably love to be proven wrong). All that damage from one bad game... one that's not even really that bad as such but which looks so when compared to it's predecessors, and being hyped up as being much more than it really is did not help matters at all. So yes, longevity is important. We may only buy that game once, but we buy more from the same developers if we love it enough. Rayvio (talk) 13:00, July 21, 2011 (UTC)