In DA2 you can sell Fenris back into slavery or kill him, kill Anders and Merrill and or her people, convince the Arishok to leave kirkwall, and there are a lot of other times you can decide what happens to Hawke's companions and other characters and factions. Yeah, you always need to fight Knight Commander Meredith in the end of the game, but it's not unusual to fight a main boss in an RPG, in Torment you need to fight Trias.

I get it, it's trendy to hate on Dragon Age II and there are certainly things I don't like about it. But your complaint that what you do doesn't affect anything more so than in other RPGs is bullshit.

Selling Fenris affects nothing. Killing Merrill affects nothing in the story. Killing Anders affects nothing. You do that at the very end and everything from there on out is set in stone.

If you could have killed Anders earlier in the game before he does that thing he does, I would have agreed with you. You can't even pick your friends in that game. No matter how you treat the companions they never leave. Everyone is forced on you. In DA:O you can kill most of them or send them away for good. DA2 is completely railroaded.

The writers even said it was, so I am not sure why you dispute it. They had to leave out almost a whole chapter due to time constraints. And because they had left so much out, the planned expansion pack couldn't be done.

It's just like killing companions in Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, etc. None of the main storylines of those games are severely altered by those decisions either. You're just whining for the sake of whining.

That is not whining. Just pointing out why DA:O is better than DA2.

And even the developers and the writers agreed on my points. They said they would address the lacking choices and the linear gameplay from DA2 when they did DA:I. It is all over their promotion vids for DA:I. So....uhm...yeah. I guess they just lied just to add weak points to your favorite "rpg".

Planescape and the rest of the games you listed up still have choices in the game that affects the story. Nothing like it in DA2. Mommy still gets killed, sibling gets taken away after chapter 1. Anders starts a war. The Qunari attacks no matter what you do. Mages attack you even if you protect them for the whole game. Templars attack you even if you support them. The game is as railroaded as a movie.

Getting rid of Morrigan early in DA:O changes the story quite a bit. That choice even branches into DA:I.

No Morrigan in your party in DA:O = Alistair or the player character dies. Kind of a significant consequence right there.

DA2 would have had the same kind of choices if EA hadn't rushed the game. A whole chapter is missing from the game.

And of course you have brilliant design like this http://abload.de/img/dragonage2_ceiling_en6zs3c.jpg

Enemies just spawning in the ceiling and raining down on your party so the player can button mash even more.

Da:o is a great game for any one that likes tactics... the only issue I have with it is the lack of a happy ending.

Da:i is a bad joke made to sell seats at game shows and is the kind of crap we have come to expect from Bioware games i.e, half finished $ crabs

That's not even the half of it. There are two big factions that you theoretically choose between but even that doesn't matter. You still end up fighting the same big bosses even if you choose their side. Absolutely nothing matters.

The repetitive dungeons are one of the most annoying cheap cases of reuse, I have ever seen in a game. You end up in the same dungeon layout something like 10 times. They just keep using it over and over because it was too rushed to even bother with more dungeon layouts.

DAO was the last Bioware RPG. Crafted lovingly over time.

DA2 represents the death of Bioware, the rushed, EA driven, cash grab.

1 map for all the 20+ caves you go into. 1 for the 10+ dungeons. 1 for the 20 warehouses. 1 for the 20+ houses. Thats it.

As is the case with the majority of RPGs.
I agree, this is a major problem with Dragon Age II.


Stop being so dramatic. Yeah, Dragon Age II is the weakest game in the series and they should've spent more time and money on it. I think most people would agree on that, but it's not "the death of Bioware". That's so fucking ridiculous. It's also not a cash grab, it didn't earn all that much money. The writers of Dragon Age and a lot of fans wanted more Dragon Age so Bioware put out a quick sequel. Unfortunately, gamers are the most fickle and shitty customer base there is, so Bioware's plan backfired financially. It's a shame, Dragon Age isn't a bad game. It's just low budget and unpolished compared to it's predecessor and sequel.

So you are the Drama police? Bioware is dead. EA swallowed them, sucked out everything that made them unique, the same thing they did to dozens of other companies. Bioware is nothing but a meaningless brand name now.

DAO is Bioware's last RPG.
DA2 is an EA RPG.

It's totally a cash grab. A rushed, piss poor effort to make a quick buck. If you want to argue that it didn't make that much money; Fine. Then you have a failed cash grab, but it is still a cash grab.

For their credit though, I must re-emphasize how DAI is nothing at all like DA2.
It has an absolutely spectacular crapton of well crafted locations, areas, enemies.

Fixes one of my few annoyances with DAO, the way on the next playthrough you would meet exactly the same three orcs at the exactly the same spot every time, the same wolves on the same spot and they would attack the same way. DAI would have more replayability... but it has so much repetitive grindy stuff I doubt I'll ever replay.

Quite right. the locations in DA:I were stunning. I loved exploring in that game. The weak point in that game were the side quests. 99 percent of them were fetch quests. Still. A good step in the right direction again for sure.

The game director of Dragon Age: Origins was the vice president of EA when Dragon Age II came out. You don't even know who to be angry at.

100% railroaded
No choices
Only 4 cave\warehouse\house\dungeon maps that gets re-used about 20 times each.
Hack and slash combat with enemies raining down at you from the sky\ceilling
Not able to equip armours on companions. Which actually broke the money system in the game since you didn't have to spend a dime on equipment in the game.
Breaks the lore rather plenty
Doesn't mesh well with the timeline of DA:O - creating plot-holes.


Rpg fans tend to not like that kind of stuff. The developers themselves said they had to rush the game out way before it was done. That is why it is considered a poor game. If you like it - that is great. You got your money's worth.

This is something EA has been doing since the 90s. They take over companies that have popular franchises. Then they rush out half-assed sequels in the franchises to score some quick money. They repeat it until the franchise has lost its fanbase. Then they close the company down and move on to the next.

Origin
Bullfrog
Westwood
and several others. All of them ended the same way. Bioware is now being merged with another developer, by the way. Their forums are closed too.