I loved Origins! Hated 2! And am super excited for Inquisition!
In Origins when dealing with hordes, it's better to go tactical and put your team on 'hold positions' before battle. That way you can select your warrior to draw the nearest ones into a choke point, and dispatch them. Then you move the team up a little and get any AoE's going, then target with ranged. Another large group will get heavily damaged on their way to you. My favorite thing in the world though is specing out an assassin rogue and taking Zevran with. Have the mage hang back just past the Tank who you put in a choke point, and put them on Hold. Then I have Zevran and the Warden scout ahead to find and assassinate any particularly dangerous enemy. As soon as their moves are triggered, I have my tank draw attention while my mage supports in some manner. Most of the enemies rush the tank and we clean up from behind. Rogues get the most DPS out of any build so long as you use them right. They got a bad rap in Origins, though, due to console players who struggled with the inferior controls in the console port.
I also love the interaction with the characters and sense of consequence in Origins. In Origins if you pissed off party members enough they just might try to kill you! In 2 everyone just follows you like a dumb puppy no matter, and you can even 'rivalmance', which is just ****ing stupid. This was done so that players wouldn't miss out on content, but trying to prevent people from missing content due to in game choices undermines the whole idea of multiple play throughs and role playing all together.
As to stuff from Origins carrying over to 2.... it's SUPOSED to... but there were a lot of bugs as well as incorectly flagged dialogues during cameos. So while decisions you made were supposed to, for instance, effect whether you meet Happy King Alistair, Pussy Whipped King Alistair, Grey Warden Alistair, or Slobbering Drunk Alistair, your decisions may not have ported correctly.
The things I hated most about two were the fact that the combat was turned into hack n' slash cluster****s with little to no opportunity for strategy. On the rare occasion you're in a dungion with a decent set up, the lack of tactical camera and overly flashy fast moves left you fighting the controls and camera angles more than your enemies! Then there was the pointless 'waves' of enemies spawning out of walls, thin air, or jumping out of the ceiling. Higher difficulty level just means they throw an extra wave of randumb at you. God awful level design! I understand the copy paste issue was due to time constraints imposed by EA, but that doesn't excuse the designs being so ****ty from the get go.
Other issues I had were complete lack of in game logic... Yeah, I'm a mage but no one says **** to me, Anders mouths off to Sir Cullen, and Cullen notes that he is an apostate but does **** all about it... Stupid stupid stupid. Now, this was somewhat a problem in Origins, too, but in Origins they had the sense to gloss over it with the fact that you are a Grey Warden during a Blight and everyone needs your god damn help. In Kirkwall you're just a damned errand boy. Then there's the fact that no matter what you do, the outcome of a quest was almost always linear in 2. Even in the endgame when you have to choose between siding with Mages or Templars, it makes literally no difference. You still have to fight both the Templar boss and the Mage boss. And the magical mcguffin from the deep roads was so stupid. My first instinct was to throw it in the lava. Everyone realizes the thing seems like bad news but 'luls, have to bring it anyway just cuz!' Then there's the really messed up dialogue wheel that is so unpradictable at times, and the really ham handed writing on characters like Anders and Merril. I couldn't get through a full playthrough and was grateful I only played a borrowed copy.
Now, to give credit where it's due... I think it WAS cool that they added some more cinematic effects to cut scenes... though they were still pretty cringe worthy (Anders sitting on the box moping, and if you choose to kill him you just stab him in the back. lame) I liked how the characters had their own lives more so than in Origins... they weren't just sitting around a camp fire waiting for orders. That's neat. In fact they form relationships of their own with each other. So that was the one game play improvement. Aesthetically facial rendering improved but elves became deformed aliens... But the armor and clothing... now THAT was A+ work far exceeding what was done in Origins. ONE guy did a knock out job. lol
I'm really glad that after 2 bombed, EA went hands off. You could tell DA2 wasn't the game they wanted to make, especially when you see how excited the devs are this time, and how they've been consulting with fans through the whole process. They seem like they are really getting to make a dream game this time, and I'm pretty optimistic about it. The controls look better than in ether previous game, the graphics are phenomenal, and we're literally getting more of everything we liked. It would be hard for them to **** this up, from all the clips I've seen of gameplay.
Also, this time you can download a program called 'The Keep' for free in order to address porting issues. The Keep allows you to go through lists and select what decisions you made in the previous games.
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Originally Posted by EccentricSage
