spoiler Awakenings rant

[XTR3M368]

I am putting this in this section due to some spoilers....

 

I really enjoyed the story line and had fun playing this but here goes with the criticism......

 

I really liked Mhairi! WTF?!! Kill her off at the beginning? Why? That left the choices of pretty much a sausage fest....other than Velanna that will be hot after I do the morph....and a dwarf female? No amount of morphing is going to fix that. Why couldn't we have had the Legion member that thanked us in DAO after doing the dwarf mission? Then we could have gotten rid of Ohgren the dumbass and the female dwarf altogether and kept Mhairi. There is a good reason Tolkien never had dwarf females running about....Bioware should have taken the hint on that.

 

No romances either? pffft! There could have been 4, 2 male and 2 female, if they didn't kill off Mhairi and Velanna would be interesting. (Hell no with the dwarf female) The females could have had Nathaniel and Anders. If I was good at scripting and quest modding, the first thing I would do is to have Mhairi survive the joining and get busy with both her and Velanna as soon as I got polygamy to work in Awakenings. :woot:

 

Did any others find the fighting much too easy in Awakenings? I don't know if it is just because I am familiar now with the combat system or what. With all the new buffs we have, my tank character waded through this with the ease of a hot knife sliding through melting butter....I was a little disappointed. I used a 25th level imported dual wielding Warrior/Templar/Spirit Warrior mostly because I like the dual wield death moves the best. I bought the respecialization book and reordered my guy. With some of the imported items I had when importing him and some of the new items and armor, I found myself not needing the healing potions and only had to use the stamina potions when I used unending flurry.

 

As for the troubles that others have had using mods in Awakenings, I just didn't have any. Every mod that I had installed for DAO worked....even the ones that others had complained about not working.

 

I guess I should talk about the good stuff. I liked that they added new weapons and tiers. I also like that they added rune crafting and the ability to add runes to armor....I always thought that was lacking in DAO. The areas were nicely done and it didn't feel like a half assed mini game like so many other expansion packs for other games seem to feel like.

 

OK rant over....I hope to see some talented modders that feel as I have resurrect Mhairi.

[hrobertson]

Im mostly in agreement with what was said. I liked the story and how the player really gets tossed into a position of politcal duties as well as beat-em-up. The quests were plentyful considering the small amount of locations. I found the battles were easy-moderate, but also said above I use a roll-over character and am pretty familur to his/her abilities. Having said that, and that being my nice section :tongue: ..... Ohgren..?? Really?? Come on Bio, a log that talked would be more useful then that dumb monkey. Thank the maker for the respec books otherwise Oggy would be less then zero use to me. When DAA first became available I really had my hopes up that Liliana and Zev would make an appearence. Those 2 with Nathaniel and Anders would have made some funny story swapping times, plus those 2 would be more likely to make an appearnce in other games due to there backgrounds. It also would make romances an option again. Whats up with that?? Kill everything that walks and in this game talks, and no nookie at the end of a hard days fight? The GW's are not monks...and the ending...without sounding un-thankful for the hard work bioware does to put out quality games, all Ill say about the ending is "They cant all be winners" :confused:

[RustyBlade]

Awakening's only saving grace was that someone was kind enough and smart enough to port it all into Origins. Since I have nothing else nice to say about it I will not say anything and leave it to those who are good at ranting :wink:

[DarkeWolf]

The short answer- I played thru it once, and two days later UNINSTALLED it!

 

Laggy as hell in some areas, didnt really care for either of the dwarves, couldnt have given a rat's tail about Mhairi, didnt like Velanna, kinda got used to Nathaniel, and found Anders amusing. Bugs, bugs and bugs. I wasnt too pleased about having some of my best gear taken away from me, and then NOT given back, because the silver mines were bugged.

Also pissed me off about how the crap made it so much harder to get other mods to work.

 

I DID like one thing in particular tho. "Hey, warden can you go do this, this and this for me?" I'm too busy! Or I don't have time. IE- I'm NOT your freaking servant!

 

I LIKED the pre-emptive strike against the rebelious nobles. That was fun. I took a lot of joy in slaying them. I also liked seeing my name (sort of) in the game :D

I liked the new skills. I liked some of the new enemies.

 

I hated the ending. It just cut off and left me sitting here going... "WTF??? That's IT!?!?!"

I didnt like how they didnt really give a whole lotta detail about the Architect, or his plans. Something that they really did start out well, in the book. Didnt say JACK about his involvement with the prior wardens and duncan, from the book. Oh, yeah... the mute dwarf is there. But it doesnt say jack shyt about her!

 

To me, it seemed like it got "rushed out the door before it was ready" by EAgames. Yes, I will blame them for this. It could have been a lot more, and a lot better, but it was just pushed out, without taking the time to get things right, get things explained, and actually make a good story outta it.

 

40 bucks?? I coulda been in smokes for a week and a half with that. Or bought a REAL GAME on ebay.

 

Expansion? Nay, I say overpriced DLC.

[Coous]

Awakening wasn't soooo bad. The reason why it's easy because well.. you're pretty much overpowered by now,even as my dw warrior just dawning his origin gear and not upgrading he was super op. I say it served it's role as the story continuer well despite the really bad ending of cliffhanging scene. I just wonder if there will be another story continuer or is this the end of the tale's origin. I think they could of made a better attempt at scaling the enemies or imposing daunting challenges.

[danscott84]

Ok, I just finished the DLC (yes, that's what it basically is) after getting bored about halfway through it. Decided to end it just to see the finale, and what a joke. The only good thing was that I went back to Leliana for good instead of the "together for a time" bit from Origins. And my sword is stolen? WTF?? And why is the high dragon ghost the hardest thing to beat? And that wasn't hard. I ported in from Origins at level 25, and somehow I get the feeling that the opponents are not levelled with me in the DLC like they are in Origins. Why? And what happened to Oghren? He went from be the funny man to a sad, drunken, absentee father?? At least Sigrun had some good one liners, but the others were just plain dull. I was hoping more from them as the game went on, but nothing. The one fun part to play was the Blight Orfens quests if only to help the bar patrons pick on the Revered Mother and the one guys girlfriend. Here's to hoping my sweet Leliana's DLC is much better than this. :confused:

 

EDIT: Ok, I have to admit to one funny side effect of this, I ended Origins with the Warden Commander armor I got from Sophia Dryden, and it did not port in. Plus, I have Natural Bodies installed, so during the opening sequence my character is "saluting" Mhairi as we are walking down the road. It was at least good for a laugh, but then the fight started.....

[RustyBlade]

It was at least good for a laugh

 

That's what she said :whistling:

 

Sorry, you left yourself open for that one :tongue:

[ell46]

I agree with pretty much everything that has been said.

 

As I live in the UK the price wasn't so bad especially as I shopped around and got a good deal, but it meant waiting a week for it to be delivered, if I'd had to pay what some did I would have been fuming.

 

I arrived in the game minus weapons, but at least had clothes. I liked Mahri as well it's a pity Ogren didn't die in the joining and she lived, I noticed a few bugs which were annoying but I tend to expect bugs and as long as the game doesn't crash I'll go with it and wait for patches, but you shouldn't have to for some of the bugs were inexcusable. I was expecting it to be on the same lines as Origins and found the interaction with PCs extremely disappointing to say the least, especially as Anders approval went to love and I was left thinking what the heck is that about :blink: I dished out the gifts to everyone and only spoke to them if the marker came up.

 

I found the whole game rushed and it didn't flow well. I hated the way the game decided it was time to go to war and not me, especially when I went back to the keep with Sigrun and Valana in tow expecting them to go through the joining and because I had finished the 3 darkspawn quests... too late it's war or nothing and I hate the way BW lock you out of places once you have finished a quest there, like Wardens Peak in DAO and the Mines DAA, what's it to them if I want to go back and wander around, just in case I missed something.

 

When I saw Wynne standing outside the chantry I gave her a wide berth on the second play through. After DAO I wish I'd had the option to choose the 'fight' command and kill her and to make matters worse the woman she wanted me to find, was worse than she was, there's another I would have killed and buried in her 'dirt' :sick: what a voice. I knew I should have ignored her the first time round.

 

I played it twice to experience both endings and what endings is what I'd like to know, it must be like that falling off a cliff when you didn't see the edge, There isn't even a chance to save before it goes into the epilogues and mine was absolute rubbish and didn't fit in with DAO at all. I've no desire to play it again, I'm not even sure a mod could be made that would make me want to play it again.

 

I did enjoy the puzzles, they were very good. :smile:

 

Just for reference no I didn't buy DSChronicles and NO I won't be buying this new one or any add-ons that are 'lets play X' from the party in DAO, if they were lets join X and adventure with them maybe after I've read what everyone is saying.

[Thandal]

Agree with almost all of the criticisms above. I think "rushed" is the single most appropriate adjetive. Which is most unfortunate considering that DA:A is an expansion, not a DLC, and therefore theoretically had the full-up development team and QA treatment, whatever those are at Bioware these days! :whistling: (Just kidding, BW! I'm buying the product, aren't I?)

 

Thought Nathaniel was the most interesting of the new Companions, and wished there were more interaction with him, as well as between him and the others. Infer (from the posts to the BW Social Forum) that several of the "Companion Quests" are broken in that they won't trigger. Among other fixes rumored to be included in 1.04 are those, so we may actually be able to finish them before the DS Horde descends!

[danscott84]

It was at least good for a laugh

 

That's what she said :whistling:

 

Sorry, you left yourself open for that one :tongue:

 

LOL Hey, I didn't make the model. Too bad she doesn't live long enough to "test" it. :whistling: