I see no reason to believe that Bethesda has any idea what was great about Morrowind or even the faintest shadow of a suggestion in any modern game they've made that they could reproduce it.
BioWare
Bethesda
I see no reason to believe that Bethesda has any idea what was great about Morrowind or even the faintest shadow of a suggestion in any modern game they've made that they could reproduce it.
For me, decent lore and world building should be married with rich character development. Without one or the other, the game becomes jarring with story-telling.Originally Posted by Vivi22
A game with fantastic world-building but questionable character development becomes somewhat hollow; a great world, but relatively empty with dialogue or development. On the other hand, fantastic character development with a poor world-building leaves you with stringing together a series of moments, without much of a big picture.
Dragon Age, for me, combines both well. There's a great lore in the world, some of it cliché, but for the most part even the clichéd elements are well written with plenty of mystery. The characters are great, fleshed out, and there's several moments of humour.
Mass Effect has these as well, but I've always felt more connected to the world of Thedas.
I got Dragon Age Origins today DUN DUN DUN
I hope you enjoy! Dragon Age: Origins is still many people's favourite in the series, funnily enough. While I tend to disagree, it is still a very good game. It has aged somewhat over the years, and the armour designs vary from decent to disgusting, but it is a great game with a good, if formulaic, story structure.
Just one tip: don't choose a warrior for your character. You're practically swimming in warriors by the end of the game, and you have only two rogue and two mage companions, maximum. Whereas at maximum you have five warriors.
I hope you aren't implying that there's a problem with my party of Warrior Cousland, Dog, Sten, and Shale has some kind of problem.
Yeah you're not playing Warrior Aeducan.
Honestly though, I've been defending Bethesda but they aren't even my favorite dev. My favorite dev is Blizzard because I'm a loser and my obsession with Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo knows no bounds. In second place is probably... Paradox? Firaxis is up there somewhere.
As for DA:O. My party generally consists of as many Cute Boys™ as I can find, because I'm shallow. Meaning Cute Male Warden, Alistair, Zevran, and then whoever else wants to tag along.
weird way to spell Barkspawn but okay
I went with a Rogue Dual Dagger Female Cousland, because I'm boring and tend to pick human.
My ideal 'get stuff done' party pretty much always had Alistair (who I romanced and became Queen with), a Mage and usually a second ranged character, typically Leliana or the other Mage. I was playing on Casual though, so party composition wasn't so important and I brought along whoever was best for approval or banter. Zevran didn't get much of a look-in though, due to the double-up of roles.
Bioware's games aren't for me while I enjoy Bethesda's quite a lot.
I don't really find most bethesda games super amazing
but i really love me1 and 2, and dao
think i'm gonna go with biowarez
everything is wrapped in gray
i'm focusing on your image
can you hear me in the void?
My first WRPG experience was late 2014...maybe Nvember. It was Dragon Age Origins. I then played DA2. I then moved onto the Mass Effect Trilogy. From there I believe it was KOTOR 1 and 2. Finally I moved over and played Fallout 3, New Vegas, Morrowind and Skyrim.
The peculiar thing is...even though I invested hours upon hours into the TES games, and had lots of fun, I never finished either. For Morrowind it was part the gameplay getting stale and part I screwed up the quests by killing an Ashlander. It wasn't my fault! I was stuck on a table or something in a tent and hadn't saved in forever and I was jamming every button I could to get off and I punched some random person. This screwed over the MQ because I couldn't get all the tribes to agree I was the...whatever .Navarim or something like that. For Skyrim I just had invested 150+ hours. I was done.
The odd thing here is I love TES lore. Like, a lot. As in, I spent much of my Morrowind and Skyrim runs just reading books I found. I pretty much ignore the DA Codexes. I glance at them from time to time but that's about it. The fact is, a BW story is so much more..."involving" than a Bethesda one that the lore is kind of the real meat of a TES game's story. The lore in DA just gets in the way. I want to talk to Zevran or Merrill or Cass, not waste time learning about the Ages.
Both BioWare and Bethesda take vastly different approaches to your PC's as well. A person I know once likened roleplaying in a Betheda game to playing make believe with a doll house. It's all in your head, really. You are offered very little substantive characterization in the form of dialogue or the like. With BW though, huge emphasis is put on dialogue trees and now their patented dialogue wheel. There's very little ways to express yourself in a Bethesda game when compared to BioWare.
Then again, BW can be pretty bad at this. I'm looking at you Mass Effect 3 and your crappy forced characterization of Shepard.
In terms of gameplay, it varies. I hated the battle system in Inquisition, was meh about the one in Origins and liked 2's. With Mass Effect, the battle system only got better each game. Also BioWare games are way harder in my experience. I died infinitely more in Mass Effect than I ever did in Fallout 3 or Skyrim and that was on Casual whereas I played the Bethesda games on Normal or above. Granted, ME3 Casual was TOO esy so I did switch up to Normal there.
So which series has better writing? It be unfair to say Bethesda can't write good characters. People love Dagoth Ur for a reason. I love the Skyrim Dark Brotherhood for a reason. I've also heard good things about some of the Oblivion guilds. There's also an NPC in Fallout 3 that I adore called Bittercup. I named my current Hawke after her. And while FO3's companions had minimal characterization, Clover was interesting and you can kind of see an "evolution" of her character in FO4's Cait, who I love.
But it's clear that isn't where Bethesda's focus lies. It's a secondary concern to building a big world full of lore and info. Are they better worldbuilders than BioWare? I dunno. Just because I don't read the Codexes doesn't mean I don't care. I think the Qunari are possibly the most fascinating faction I've seen in an RPG.
It's important to note however BW is not much better at main plots than Bethesda. BioWare is all about Generic Forces of Evil Threatens Us All. The one time they tried something different, Dragon Age II, they got endless trout for it so you can trust they won't try that again any time soon. I suspect DA4 will start off about Tevinter, maybe trying to reform it into something less awful, but devolve into a Save the World story after a while.
So...who do I like more? Well Mass Effect 2 is possibly the greatest video game I've ever played. However, I love playing Skyrim and Fallout 3. It really is apples and oranges.
But no one's complaint about DA2 is that the story is "different." They got endless trout about DA2 because of all the recycled zones (aka the One Cave, with different paths cordoned off), and removal of meaningful tactics from combat.
Bethesda. I'm one of the few people on here who thoroughly enjoy playing Oblivion and FO3.
Yeah the story is actually quite good, in that it has a tightly plotted arc, things all tie together, and it's actually trying to do and say something interesting that is not just "heroes save the world, bad guys get mad, then killed". It's quite remarkable in that for all the Champion does, whether they have any meaningful effect on the world is kind of in doubt.
However, the game was tiny and felt it, as Spuuky says the problems with repeated dungeons/caves are massive. The tactics were also downgraded a good deal from Origins, but personally I still found the combat to be quite a lot of fun. Unlike Inquisition.
Boy I sure do love holding attack for 4 minutes to kill yet another damage sponge! Ended up turning the difficulty down over and over with that game because it's possibly the worst instance of "how to make a fight harder? give them more hp" I have ever seen. The fights were not a bit more difficult (The trial that adds random skills and can rank up enemies is far more effective at that) except inasmuch as it took patience to finish them. Makes DA2 look like god damn Command: MANO when it comes to tactics.
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