by EricSB
2. April 2010 03:57
As my previous post indicated I’m a huge fan of the Dragon Age franchise from BioWare. And Awakening was extremely well done but now that I’ve beat it, I have to confess that I am disappointed in the length of the game. It was longer than “Return to Ostagar” the most recent add-on for Dragon Age pre-Awaking but the price was right. I feel some what ripped off by the price of Awaking given how little content there really is.
Don’t get me wrong the game is REALLY good, in fact there were some very nice tweaks that I’m excited about, but you don’t really get to enjoy them for nearly as long as the initial Origins experience.
In the end, the game suddenly comes to an abrupt end akin to flying a military jet into a brick wall. The way the game ended felt as if content was cut out. There are so many loose ends left in this rendition of Dragon Age that I’m left with wondering if they didn’t want a Return to Ostagar repeat in being very late to release and as such they cut tons of content out? What really happened there? Was it that, or something different? Was that the intended end and if so who wrote the story and left all the loose ends untied?
There are also a few subtle annoyances that I felt I should mention: There is a very specific event in the game that occurs. Once this event occurs and depending on a rather important decision you make after that time you’re potentially stuck with a party that you were working on fostering and wind up fighting the end-boss monster with them. In my case I choose a new party member who happens to be a rogue. This rogue, unfortunately did NOT have lock pick capabilities. A very important skill to have for the end. In the end this issue forces the user to follow a specific path and I always thought BioWare was against linear style games?
As the Warden Commander you’re now putting people through the joining. If you go too far in a specific area of the game, you better have already put your new party members through the joining or it just isn’t going to happen. Again, no hint, clue or idea that this is the case and I was left with two party members unable to complete the joining.
So with all of those thoughts I draw two final sentiments:
- Maker’s Breathe, do we REALLY have to wait until 2/1/2011 for more?
- Can you please carefully study every aspect of the story to ensure that, within reason, the player should have the ability to complete any quests he/she may have acquired. I shouldn’t be just flat out of luck with 15 quests just because I went into a mine or a lair!
I seriously doubt anyone from BioWare knows this blog exists, let alone read my Dragon Age posts, but if someone does happen to stumble upon this, know that I love the game, the Dragon Age franchise can be huge. There is soooo many aspects of the story that can be built into DLC or Expansions with ease. The Dragon Age franchise still has lots of life left and I believe this can be a huge cash cow with DLC.