mswyrr:

fableprincess:

Reblog if you like Dragon Age II just as much if not more than Dragon Age: Origins.

Just want to know how many of us there are.

#perfect self-contained tragedy #nothing was ever going to be alright in kirkwall

Okay.

Time for my DA2 rant.

If DA2 had been a film, or a novel, I would sing its praises from here to eternity. It is a beautiful tragedy, with compelling characters, that explores things like oppression and rebellion and morality. It’s heart wrenching.

But as a game?

God damn was it frustrating.

No, really – it’s one of the few games I’ve played that make me controller-throwing angry. Mechanics aside, the story structure is good for films and novels, horrendous for games.

One of the biggest things I look for in games is player agency – the whole point is that my choices as a player should impact the game world in significant ways. DA2 strips that agency almost entirely. Nothing was ever going to be alright in Kirkwall – and from a player agency perspective, that’s a Very Bad Thing. And again, that’s before we talk about mechanics.

My first play through, I missed about 2/3rds of chapter 2, entirely by accident. I never even met Isabella. I finished up a side quest, wandered into the Arishok fight, and bam, time for chapter 3. I then proceeded to miss a significant portion of chapter 3, as well, again – entirely by accident. What this meant was that I reached the end of the game at level 16-18, and couldn’t complete the fight with Orsino. At all. I was mechanically unable to complete the game. That is…..just bad design, frankly. The endgame wasn’t scaled to my character level, which made it impossible to complete.

I started over.

This time, using a guide, I was able to complete the game, and by the end of it I was so spitting mad I could barely breathe. I tried different things throughout my playthrough, hoping that I could alter the ending somewhat. Even if I couldn’t prevent it, maybe I could mitigate it somewhat – nope. Can’t change the Arishok’s mind, can’t change Orsino’s mind, can’t change Anders’ mind, can’t change Meredith’s mind.

I can change which sibling gets brutally murdered, and whether or not Anders survives, but that’s it. That’s not agency – it’s window dressing. It emphasizes and points out the illusion of choice – it’s the reason so many people raged at the ending of Mass Effect. It’s the reason so many guides exist for how not to railroad players for tabletop RPGs.

Origins handled the illusion of choice very differently, and it was far less frustrating. You cannot stop the Blight, or the Archdemon’s appearance in Denerim, but you can alter the political landscape in serious ways – you can have an impact on several different areas. You can change what happens at the Circle tower, you can change what happens to the elves in the Alienage, you can change what happens in Redcliff, you can change how Thedas is ruled. You can even change how the Archdemon dies. All of the choices have negative consequences, but they still feel as though you accomplished something.

DA2 wasn’t like that.

No matter what choices you make, the Qunari rampage through the city.

No matter what choices you make, Anders conceals his intent to bomb the Chantry.

No matter what choices you make, Orsino turns himself into a giant flesh golem.

No matter what choices you make, Meredith goes batshit and has to be killed.

And no matter what choices you make, the Mage Rebellion plays out the exact same way.

It’s frustrating, as a player, because it is the equivalent of “rocks fall, everyone dies.” You are denied the opportunity to actually change anything with your action, and the end result is that it makes all of those choices cheap – there’s no emotional investment, since what you do doesn’t really matter. Again, if this was a passive form of media, like film, that wouldn’t be frustrating – a film that emphasizes that the world cannot be changed by one person is a tragedy, and the story structure would work well. We could empathize with Hawke, feel his/her pain, and enjoy the plucky hero struggling against the inevitable disaster.

But games are active media – the whole point of games is that they’re interactive, that you change things. Your choices impact the story, and change the world your avatar lives in. DA2 fails to deliver on that.

So, the TL:DR version – DA2 was a shitty game, but would have made one hell of a good movie. I still have yet to encounter a game with such well-written characters. But I don’t want to play it again.

yourplayersaidwhat:

“Alright, FINE. You cast Mage Hand. You are now holding seven thousand small crabs.”

— The weary DM upon foolishly confirming that sure, a swarm of tiny creatures might weigh less than twenty pounds.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

lavender-lily:

turquoisetigress:

lavender-lily:

I was a little late to the Hozier party. I mean I loved Take Me To Church and I laughed at the dark forest prince memes and I even reblogged them, but I figured it was all kind of a tumblr exaggeration.

Then I listened to his album, wherein he sings about:

• decomposing in a field with his love and getting eaten by foxes
• being dug out of the dirt by his love, who he implores to kiss him “like real people do”, implying that neither of them are real people
• observing the world as an outsider (“happy to lie back, watch it burn and rust; we tried the world, good god it wasn’t for us”)
• rising from his grave to crawl home to his love
• “the bog man”

and I realized, no, he’s just Like That.

are you telling me all of those are real songs and not just aesthetics tumblr made up

Listen, I didn’t believe it either, but that’s absolutely what I’m telling you.