Longo:
If that was the worst he said, that's pretty ridiculous to ban him for such a minor thing. Glad I'm having this chat with Link on here, where I don't have to worry about being kicked out of both the forum AND my game.
Link:
[SPOILERS]
You're right about the illusion of choice being like that in most games. But my expectations were higher here, because of Origins. Is it fair for me to expect more of DA2 because of what DA:O did? Maybe, maybe not. But yeah, maybe the urn wasn't the greatest example. Better examples would be things like which dwarf you put on the throne, and did you destroy the anvil. Did you save Connor from the Demon, and if so, did you kill the Arlessa to do it, or did you use the Circle? Did you kill the elves, or kill the wearwolves, or break the curse? These are all things that when you were done, the world had been changed for it. If you killed the elves, there weren't any elves in that forest. If you saved the Anvil, there was an army of Golems waiting for you. Did you put Alistair on the throne, or did you exile him to far off lands, and leave Anora in charge, while sending Loghain to his death against the Arch Demon? These are all massive story changing events. There were almost no events like that in DA2. Where what you did significantly changed something.
Some brief examples of what I would have liked to see. When I donated to the Feralden refugee fund (5 Sovereigns), I was hoping that in the next act, people would be talking about how much better the refugees were doing thanks to generous donations in the past. When I killed that mage who had kidnapped a young elf girl, and the noble father was pissed at me, I was hoping that was going to result in some problem in the future. When I refused to kill a noble even though I took the job from the Mercs, because I thought the Noble was doing the right thing, I was hoping that would result in SOMETHING. ANYTHING. But none of it did. It was all just filler. None of those things are mentioned again when you get to the next act. Even Fable was capable of doing things like this, and that wasn't even that good of a game! I just expect more from DA than this.
With regards to Fenris walking out on you, it would seem likely that he did not for me, because I had him at max friendship. I still stand by my statement that despite max friendship, it would have made more sense for him to walk away.
That kind of brings me to the Rivalry system though. You agree that most choices don't result in world changing events, but rather change how your companions view you. The problem was, there was NO difference in how they treat you, if you're rivals or friends! I had Merril at max friendship, and my Wife had her at max Rivalry. Not only did we both have the exact same quests, all of the lines were the same too! Even when you go visit her house, she says the same thing! No change in demeanor, no change in attitude. It didn't seem to make ANY difference! So now not only do these "choices" you make not affect the way the world turns out, it doesn't even really affect the way your companions treat you! They still give the same quests, and same conversations, with all the same dialogue options.
As for Meredith and Orsino we might have to agree to disagree. I was also shocked and pissed when he turned into the Harvester, but his lines just before it weren't enough to convince me it made sense. Everything we know about him painted him as a proud man, who was doing the best he could to insure his mages were treated well. Using blood magic was proving Meredith right, something that his character would know, and avoid. I expected him to die before using blood magic. Even if you're correct and it wasn't actually out of character though, I still feel the ending was cheapened by having them both be wrong and evil. Had the game been more morally ambiguous it would have held a much stronger punch. If neither of them turned into demons or some such thing, we'd be in a situation where both were genuinely doing what they thought was best, motivated only by their own desire to protect people. That would have been a strong conflict. Instead, it was a crazy Templar vs an Abomination. It made it almost TOO easy to just kill them and feel you did the right thing. It would have been GREAT if you killed one of them not really knowing if you did the right thing.
[/SPOILER]
It might seem that with all this complaining I didn't like the game. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed it while I played it. I will probably play through it again at some point. I was just really disappointed that they didn't do more with what they had.
