@JoakimZ Well, I suppose one thing to keep in mind I forget: DA:O was NEVER meant for consoles. It was a PC game through and through. The console port controls awkwardly, and has a weird over the shoulder camera system it wasn't designed for. I played the original on PC, so I tend to forget that aspect (I have it on X1 BC, but I haven't gone back and revisited it more than a little.)
On PC the original was a top-down isometric game just like the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate I & II, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale.) The console port wasn't part of the original design, the game started development right after BGII launched, so 2000 or so, and artwork shows it was started at least months prior, so 1999 in all liklihood. Purely a mouse driven point and click CRPG. EA created the console port of the game and instead of adapting it as a top down clicker controlled with sticks like sane and rational people, they tried to make it an action game. Eww. EA....
So...yeah. The first game is definitely the better GAME. The pacing, the settings, the story, the diversity of environments and player path choosing, questing, story points etc were all better and designed similarly to the previous all-PC classics they way they should have been played.
EA butchered the port into an over the shoulder action game. Then made the two sequels mostly over the shoulder action games to consol-ify them. In that way, you're right, the sequels were better console games than the butchered console port of the first. But the first game is still the better overall game.
Meanwhile, many years later, all of the original Infinity Engine games are coming to Switch/X1/PS4....properly adapted with sticks as an isometric interface. The way EA should have done DA:O! If it weren't EA I'd say there's hope of a remaster...but...it's EA.
(Not to mention Pillars of Eternity and Tides of Numenara, also being properly fit to consoles as classic isometric games. Respectively by Obsidian and inExile, now part of MS Game Studios, previously the two halves of Interplay/Black Isle that worked on the originals)
TL;DR: EA Fubared the console port of DA:O but it was the better game otherwise
Thank you all for the input but @NEStalgia what do you mean with "any chance to get more dialog with Claudia Black as Kate Mulgrew's daughter is worth the price"?
@BlueOcean Claudia is always awesome in anything, and those two interacting together is generally hilarious, even when it's not supposed to be
In case you're unfamiliar they are both VAs in the series. Claudia has also done numerous other games, notably the uncharted series but also others i can't think of right now. She's more known for her roles in Farscape and Stargate SG1 (effectively reprising her Farscape role opposite Ben Browder. Mulgrew is best known as Cap. Janeway in star trek Voyager, and is almost a Katherine Hepburn pastiche.
I haven't played any Dragon Age game yet but I got Origins and II with Gold and they look interesting so I will definitely play them. Inquisition for a few pounds/euros/dollars can't be a bad deal but would people pay seven more for having Andromeda as well? :S
Oh yes, EA, we are still waiting for the Mass Effect remastered trilogy...
@BlueOcean by most accounts Inquisition is better than II. II isn't bad but it was clearly rushed and very "EAed"... It wasn't well received at launch, but people warmed to it later. Inquisition compromised a bit between origins vision and II as a "sorry we borked the game" sequel. With all the DLC in the complete editions it's definitely worth it. Though Andromeda is probably worth it to. Im only for partly into it but it's actually decent. Fan backlash killed it early, but imo it's problem isn't actually the game, it was the completely broken pre alpha state they launched it in. People rightfully rejected paying $60 for broken junk, but the game under it, once they fixed it, is kind of cool. To late to save the series or bioware from the chopping block, unfortunately...
Also it was one of the few games that ran badly on x1, but ran great on ps4 pro. They stealth patched it last fall and it's now x1x enhanced.
EA is weird. On the rare occasions they do right by their customers, they hide it and pretend they didn't
I haven't played Andromeda but yes, the biggest problem was that the game was launched before it was properly tested. However, I'm a bit tired of open-world games to be honest so I'm not sure I need another.
@NEStalgia Maybe EA stands for "Extreme Autism", because they're still very much in denial, and in their own bubble. If you make statements like "micro-transactions can be done right", then you're already completely out of touch with what gamers really want.
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@BlueOcean Andromeda isn't open world in the open world sense of a Ubisoft game IMO. EA doesn't do "open world" quite in that sense. Much as I hate EA, I like the "scripted open world style" they use in their open worlds. Instead of a Ubisoft/Rockstar "sandbox" it's just an open world that you can deviate or approach the script your own way, but it's still mostly scripted. The Saboteur, Andromeda, Mirror's Edge, etc, all follow that. In that regard they're about as open world as FFVII or IX (which is to say much more open than X or XIII, but not as much as XV, or a Ubisoft/Rockstar game.) Andromeda does it the way you'd expect an actual space exploration mission (gone wrong) to go. Plus ME1 was properly "open world" in the classic RPG sense. It was 2 and 3 that turned the game into on-rails shooters.
Yeah their indie publishing has picked up - I remember when that's mostly what they did was publish third parties...remember when publishers were....publishers? Rather than monolithic mega studios?
@ThanosReXXX I remember when EA and MS shared a lot of revolving door management and seemed to have an aligned (poisonous) view of the future of gaming. Now it's the other way around and EA and Sony seem to be issuing eerily similar sounding comments. There's chatter in the PS4 thread about just how gross Sony's getting - focusing on big publishers only (with a fairly overt anti-indie bent), their sky's the limit hardware specs they're dripping details on that hint at a $600 or above console release, focusing not on mass market but on the "high margin niche of dedicated buyers", focused on buying exclusivity or timed exclusivity of the biggest games, etc. etc. It's very EA-like thinking going on there. It's everything that was wrong with late 360, early X1 era MS going on right now on team blue.
New Game Pass games:
Shadow of War
My Time at Portia
Undertale (PC only)
Blazing Chrome
Dead Rising 4
Lego City Undercover (XB1 only)
Timespinner (PC only)
Unavowed (PC only)
Also Game Pass owners get early access to Gears 5 Tech Test.
@NEStalgia I haven't played the Mass Effect games yet, I was waiting for the remastered trilogy. That said, the worst case of open-world is not Ubisoft/Rockstar but Breath of the Wild.
Lego City Undercover is the game with awful frame rate on Wii U and Switch, right? The Xbox version should run fine on Xbox One S and X.
@ThanosReXXX Yep, that's been my argument over there, repeating PS3 launch seems inevitable - or even worse pricing and worse sales. I would not be shocked at all to seem them drop a $700 price tag, but I think $600 is likely (with subsidy losses.) People defend it saying "but inflation" but nobody seems to understand the inflation factor doesn't work on mass market luxury goods when discretionary income is LESS due to inflation, and tech prices are expected to go down, not continuously increase. But they explicitly said they're focusing on "high margin" "niche."
Granted X1X launching at $500 may show there's a pricing trend, but X1X is an optional premium model, not the base SKU - it was never meant to carry the generation.
Based on the fact Sony seems to see their position (kind of like their almost failed TV market) as the luxury premium brand with a price and specs to match, I may actually expect Scarlett will be notably LESS powerful than a PS5, but will arrive at a much more sane price and thus curb stomp PS5 in the mass market. I can't see MS trying to outdo the by most reports overwhelming specs of PS5, and I can't see MS trying to launch at the inevitable $600...or even $500, as the current underdog. Then the ponies will rail about their superior hardware. While the SLI GTX camp points and laughs from their liquid-cooled towers.
Sony's hubris has returned with a vengeance. (I'm sure PS6 will save us from MS's inevitable hubris by then though.)
Yeah, that picture really fits the mood of their current brand
@BlueOcean I happen to like BotW a lot....that was a pretty special game to me..but it certainly did lack direction. I happened to be ok with that in the context of that game...I just enjoyed going where the wind took me so to speak in a way I don't feel that you can do in a Ubi/Rock game. But I can see if you're looking for driven objectives rather than rambling exploration it could be kind of dull.
LCU ran fine on WiiU - the graphics were soft in spots and loading times were HORRENDOUS but I don't recall bad frame rates. The Switch port has some bad frame rates though. I have it on X1 as well but haven't played it on there yet.
@DarthNocturnal Oh true. That is why I said "right?", because I wasn't sure. So this is the Xbox One version which I guess has good performance... right?
@NEStalgia So the Switch version has worse performance than the Wii U version, yeah, now that you mention it, I remember.
My bet for next generation is $€500 just like Xbox One X and similar specifications for Scarlett and PS5 but if Microsoft customise Scarlett as much as Xbox One X it could be more optimised than PS5. Xbox One X has a deeply customised architecture. Microsoft said that X was not being sold at a loss and it was a customised state-of-the-art console. Scarlett and PS5 will be state-of-the-art consoles too and perhaps both Microsoft and Sony will lose a bit of money with each unit sold during the first months, like Sony did with PS4. What I know for sure is that Scarlett won't be less powerful than PS5 because of how well Xbox One X performed and was received by gamers and critics, because Xbox One was perceived as "the weaker" in 2013 and because Microsoft can afford losing money in the hardware sale.
@NEStalgia I don't believe for a millisecond that PS5 is going to be so much more powerful than Microsoft's next iteration of the X1X. It would also be pretty damn stupid for Microsoft to give away their current upper hand in regards to console hardware specs. They've currently got the world's most powerful console, and so they should build upon that, by taking the next step, and besides continuing being the most powerful, also starting to attract a bigger variety of publishers and games, and subsequently, a bigger audience.
Crazy specs in a console simply isn't going to happen. It's always going to be mid- to upper-mid range gaming PC specs, nothing more. Unless Sony is willing to take a very deep dive and risk all, which they couldn't and shouldn't. I don't know if Sony is suffering from a new bout of hubris, but they've certainly grown complacent and currently, they're stepping on toes left, right AND center.
No, realistically, I expect both premium models to either be more or less on par, or Microsoft's to be the slightly more powerful one, NOT the other way around. That would make Microsoft give away the only hardware-related benefit that they currently have, which would be beyond stupid.
Of course, Microsoft will always have the upper hand in services and backwards compatibility, but that just isn't enough to win back what they've lost over this generation, so they need to level up, not down, and as such, I don't think it would make much sense for them to once again play second fiddle.
P.S.
WHO says LEGO City Undercover runs bad on Wii U?
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@BlueOcean That depends though. If the "leaks" Sony keeps dropping are to be believed (and there's no reason not to) they're really going "sky's the limit" putting pretty ridiculous hardware into that thing. But that's going to come at a cost they're either going to have to eat, or they're going to have to charge a very high price. Most are expecting a high price, and they've done it before (despite it being a disaster launch), and since they're openly talking about targeting a smaller, niche, high margin (their words!) market, they sound like they're looking to sell premium priced products (or at lest putting feelers out to see how that idea goes down in public...)
As for how it sizes up next to Scarlett, I think it depends between the two companies if both of their strategies is a tech arms race or whether it's designing to a price point for a set market, and how much money each company is prepared to eat to do it. I agree, "weaker" hurt X1. But that was when it was both more expensive and weaker. And then the stigma was there when it was "the same price and weaker". I can see the equation going the other way if it's "$200 cheaper and somewhat weaker but still way better than PS4 Pro!, LOL who buys the expensive Sony box, just get a PC lol." X1 didn't have any cost advantage to PS4, but still had worse hardware. Cost advantage would definitely change things. At the same time I can't see Sony coming up with $650! and Microsoft coming out with "more powerful" for only $700." Price will be a factor.
@ThanosReXXX You haven't been following the Sony "rumor" mill - I put "rumor" in quotes because it's not really rumors it's tidbits of info dropped by Mark Cerny and such so it's facts, just not dropped as PR announcements. Point is they really are putting crazy spec hardware in that thing, and with the talk of how they want to market it etc, they're not making a mass market product, at least not for the first iteration until the redesign, it's an "elite" product at first. Now they COULD subsidize heavily like in the PS2 era. But otherwise it's going to carry a high price tag. I don't disagree MS's shtick has been performance, but this time, that might be folly to try to compete directly if Sony (who SHOULD announce first) leaves room for a price war. If Sony does a $600-700 console, I'm not sure it's wise for MS to do a $650-750 console. That would be a dismal generational launch for sure. Then we'll have daily Patcher articles about how console gaming is over and streaming is the future Sony has always oritented to mass market sales, so MS has been targeting premium. If Sony goes premium, MS may benefit from the price gap and not do the arms race. (Heck just look at 1S discounts and such...they're already doing the price race to a degree.)
As for Sony's hubris, it knows no bounds right now. They're pretty much aggressively and actively flipping off indies and non-major studios now. Like I said, everything that was wrong with Mattrick era XBox is now wrong with Sony.
Now....what MS may be doing is we've heard about those two SKU rumors forever and ever,. They may have their $399 box as the mass market SKU and their $679 box as their PS5 killer. I could see that as a realistic possibility. If so, there has been no rumor of two PS5 SKUS so MS would sweep the market easily that way.....but....if that's MS's plan then we can bet that Sony has a similar plan and all the "leaking" of mega powerhouse specs as though it were "the PS5" only references the high-end SKU.
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