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Dragon Age: Black and Blue Reviews
Jan. 5th, 2011 03:36 amNothing came out this Christmas, so I'm going to review what came out this year.
Don't get your manties in a knot (man + panties = "manties"); I played this game from beginning to end and it was nice to see elements of the award-winning BioWare action-adventure engine applied to a role-playing game ("RPG"). I love RPGs and the genre has suffered an endless winter since Squaresoft/Enix went insane and Atlus beat its fanbase with fiery sticks.
No, Bethesda doesn't count.
Oblivion was marketed as a role-playing game when Bethesda realized they'd blown the entire budget building the world's biggest monochromatic sandbox...and had no money left for sand with which to fill it. You could wander for weeks and loot nothing but rat-flails. Its real title should be Grand Theft Amish.
Dragon Age is an improvement over the shit that's been released over the past few years...but making something marginally less shitty isn't the same thing as making something great. Dragon Age looks great beside its "competition" just like a moderately attractive women looks great when standing next to old, fat people.
There are multiple glaring flaws within the game. For example, the female characters are the worst since Rumble Roses. I can't find a charity that sends hookers to game programmers - which is irresponsible on our part, women, because we are being written with the fantastic inaccuracy of a 15th-century opium addict trying to sketch New World fauna based on the excited ramblings of a scurvy-crazed pioneer.
This Jedi-robed mannequin dolled up in five pounds of Maybelline is Morrigan, the legendary seductress:
If a deranged stalker crafted a pillow-doll in your likeness and served "you" imaginary tea in his daughter's bedroom, Morrigan's dialogue is what he would puppet "you" to say.
Men should be insulted that BioWare thinks their target audience wants their women to put the lotion in the basket.
Women should be insulted that BioWare suggests that the only good woman is a Real Doll.
But it doesn't end with Morrigan:
The other "romance-able" female character is an ex-hooker apparently possessed by the ghost of a five-year-old girl on a foot-quest to Disneyworld. Her sing-song attitude isn't merely inappropriate; it's insane. Leliana is both Olsen twins warring for control over the same body; one is twenty-five and has Heath Ledger's blood on her hands, and the other is three years old and obsessed with pink kittens.
Over the course of her default conversation, she shifts between "wanting storytime" and "bisexual curiosity" like a schizophrenic set off by her own nervous twitch.
But let's move on from character flaws to my core problem:
The game treats you like you're the dumbest jerkoff to ever discover his thumbs.
Like all hero characters in bad role-playing games, you're too stupid to stay alive in any universe except one where the universe revolves around you.
You're not a titan, like the world-saver should be, especially as he's paying the "game god" for the privilege of being the warrior messiah. You're such a moron that your sword is sheathed in a velcro scabbard. You are to heroism what Ron Jeremy is to sex.
This is done for "immersion," so you can "relate to the character."
So you can see yourself. BioWare doesn't see you as a battle-worn god. BioWare sees you as Piggy from Lord of the Flies, and sells that image to you like you see yourself that way.
It's like Superman dressing up as Clark Kent, a shy, clumsy idiot, so that he can "blend in" with society. Clark Kent is how Superman sees all of us. Clark Kent, the bumbling imbecile, is how Superman believes we see ourselves.
I hate that dick.
And BioWare is apparently run by a man with superman underoos.
You live in a war-torn country also afflicted by some sort of internal menace. The kingdom, on an economy fueled solely by unicorn farts, maintains a superb military force with an elite unit specifically designed to control domestic terrorism.
Then, something happens.
One can only assume it was Bring Your Child To Work Day and some juvenile delinquent took the storytelling wheel, because the story takes a jerking turn to the right, bursts through the guardrail, and explodes over a watershed.
The neighboring country threatens to invade for...unimaginable reasons. Your land has no discernible resources or exports and everybody lives in third-world squalor. We must assume that the neighboring kingdoms are suffering from life-threatening shortages of dirt and cockney.
BioWare thinks motivation is a big word for someone about to save the world by mashing two buttons for ninety-six hours. Despite the fact that political tension is 50% of the plot fuel, when the developers realized they couldn't dumb it down for a five-year-old, they put a sheet over it and hoped no one would notice.
Even Suikoden 2 had the decency to footnote "Hey, we're not going to bother you with evolved thought, so we'll just go with the prince is batshit insane."
"Fuck them, they won't notice," says BioWare, "No one's going to ask why the king is dead and their thousand-strong army has been hunted down to Player and DoucheTwo, who snivels at his side."
It gets better.
Hell's asshole is smack in the center of your country and Satan has the shits. Every 28 days or so, a genocidal red terror bursts forth from the local mountain range and washes over your land like a Golgothan tide.
Fortunately, your inevitable (and regular) demise gives all the other countries in the world time to evacuate before the Poopie Storm hits them.
That said...
...obviously...
If any other country invaded yours, it would be dismantling its own human shield.
You live in Mordor, for fuck's sake.
Nobody wants your shit. Any crops you try to grow get burned. Any animals you try to raise get raped to death by Satan and their nipples are subsequently stitched into his baby-flesh loincloth.
But whatever. Fuck sense. And fuck you too, BioWare. I'm clearly thinking way too hard for someone who still takes Game Informer seriously. Let's smash some buttons.
So, GenericKingdom wants your steaming, smoldering shitpile of a country. But, instead of holding the line against GenericKingdom, King MacaulayCulkin decides to walk up to the Hell Geyser and pick a fight with Satan himself.
Why?
WHY?!!!!!!!!!!
Why, instead of:
1) Sealing the doorway to Hell, thus saving the world, or
2) Mobilizing your entire population and invading a neighboring country before the Hell Horde wipes out another generation of your followers, or
3) Building a giant wall, or
4) BUILDING A BIG FUCK ARK! OR
5) INVENTING AIRPLANES! OR
6) MAGICKING A NUCLEAR MISSILE INTO EXISTENCE! OR
7) ANYTHING BUT KICKING SATAN IN THE TESTICLES...
No, instead of doing ANY of these things, the King engages Satan...Because he wants village idiots to tell stories of his bravery to their illegitimate children.
That's not a joke. That's his real reason.
This game cost $60, by the way. That's an entire 8.5-hour day of serving fries.
The king's second hand is the voice of Kain.
You may remember him from Soul Reaver, when he responded to grandstanding bullshit by removing the hero's lower jaw, ripping out half his spine, and hurling him headfirst into Cthulhu's vagina.
Never one to disappoint, Kain does what any intelligent character would do and kills the king. And all the king's men. And anyone who ever thought about kicking a demon in the testicles and inviting them to liquify the country his forefathers fought so hard to protect (against that GenericCountry, which is, by the way, still invading).
This act of patriotism marks Kain as the "bad guy" for the rest of the game.
Everyone dies...except your stupid ass. Because you were running an errand at the time. Seriously. They invade Poland while you're lighting a candle in France. But you're still such a shmuck that some random foot soldier knocks you out. Then, Morrigan's dumpster-diving Mom finds you and drags you back to her redneck shack in the middle of the swamp that she shares with her middle-aged daughter.
Cue the banjos.
She then gives you her daughter because...well, bugs-and-dirt stew lasts twice as long with one mouth than with two.
I'm now about thirty minutes into the replay of the game.
On the bright side, I feel so much better about my own life.
On the dark side, I can't believe I'm paying a company to put me through this.
Don't get your manties in a knot (man + panties = "manties"); I played this game from beginning to end and it was nice to see elements of the award-winning BioWare action-adventure engine applied to a role-playing game ("RPG"). I love RPGs and the genre has suffered an endless winter since Squaresoft/Enix went insane and Atlus beat its fanbase with fiery sticks.
No, Bethesda doesn't count.
Oblivion was marketed as a role-playing game when Bethesda realized they'd blown the entire budget building the world's biggest monochromatic sandbox...and had no money left for sand with which to fill it. You could wander for weeks and loot nothing but rat-flails. Its real title should be Grand Theft Amish.
Dragon Age is an improvement over the shit that's been released over the past few years...but making something marginally less shitty isn't the same thing as making something great. Dragon Age looks great beside its "competition" just like a moderately attractive women looks great when standing next to old, fat people.
There are multiple glaring flaws within the game. For example, the female characters are the worst since Rumble Roses. I can't find a charity that sends hookers to game programmers - which is irresponsible on our part, women, because we are being written with the fantastic inaccuracy of a 15th-century opium addict trying to sketch New World fauna based on the excited ramblings of a scurvy-crazed pioneer.
This Jedi-robed mannequin dolled up in five pounds of Maybelline is Morrigan, the legendary seductress:
If a deranged stalker crafted a pillow-doll in your likeness and served "you" imaginary tea in his daughter's bedroom, Morrigan's dialogue is what he would puppet "you" to say.
Men should be insulted that BioWare thinks their target audience wants their women to put the lotion in the basket.
Women should be insulted that BioWare suggests that the only good woman is a Real Doll.
But it doesn't end with Morrigan:
The other "romance-able" female character is an ex-hooker apparently possessed by the ghost of a five-year-old girl on a foot-quest to Disneyworld. Her sing-song attitude isn't merely inappropriate; it's insane. Leliana is both Olsen twins warring for control over the same body; one is twenty-five and has Heath Ledger's blood on her hands, and the other is three years old and obsessed with pink kittens.
Over the course of her default conversation, she shifts between "wanting storytime" and "bisexual curiosity" like a schizophrenic set off by her own nervous twitch.
But let's move on from character flaws to my core problem:
The game treats you like you're the dumbest jerkoff to ever discover his thumbs.
Like all hero characters in bad role-playing games, you're too stupid to stay alive in any universe except one where the universe revolves around you.
You're not a titan, like the world-saver should be, especially as he's paying the "game god" for the privilege of being the warrior messiah. You're such a moron that your sword is sheathed in a velcro scabbard. You are to heroism what Ron Jeremy is to sex.
This is done for "immersion," so you can "relate to the character."
So you can see yourself. BioWare doesn't see you as a battle-worn god. BioWare sees you as Piggy from Lord of the Flies, and sells that image to you like you see yourself that way.
It's like Superman dressing up as Clark Kent, a shy, clumsy idiot, so that he can "blend in" with society. Clark Kent is how Superman sees all of us. Clark Kent, the bumbling imbecile, is how Superman believes we see ourselves.
I hate that dick.
And BioWare is apparently run by a man with superman underoos.
You live in a war-torn country also afflicted by some sort of internal menace. The kingdom, on an economy fueled solely by unicorn farts, maintains a superb military force with an elite unit specifically designed to control domestic terrorism.
Then, something happens.
One can only assume it was Bring Your Child To Work Day and some juvenile delinquent took the storytelling wheel, because the story takes a jerking turn to the right, bursts through the guardrail, and explodes over a watershed.
The neighboring country threatens to invade for...unimaginable reasons. Your land has no discernible resources or exports and everybody lives in third-world squalor. We must assume that the neighboring kingdoms are suffering from life-threatening shortages of dirt and cockney.
BioWare thinks motivation is a big word for someone about to save the world by mashing two buttons for ninety-six hours. Despite the fact that political tension is 50% of the plot fuel, when the developers realized they couldn't dumb it down for a five-year-old, they put a sheet over it and hoped no one would notice.
Even Suikoden 2 had the decency to footnote "Hey, we're not going to bother you with evolved thought, so we'll just go with the prince is batshit insane."
"Fuck them, they won't notice," says BioWare, "No one's going to ask why the king is dead and their thousand-strong army has been hunted down to Player and DoucheTwo, who snivels at his side."
It gets better.
Hell's asshole is smack in the center of your country and Satan has the shits. Every 28 days or so, a genocidal red terror bursts forth from the local mountain range and washes over your land like a Golgothan tide.
Fortunately, your inevitable (and regular) demise gives all the other countries in the world time to evacuate before the Poopie Storm hits them.
That said...
...obviously...
If any other country invaded yours, it would be dismantling its own human shield.
You live in Mordor, for fuck's sake.
Nobody wants your shit. Any crops you try to grow get burned. Any animals you try to raise get raped to death by Satan and their nipples are subsequently stitched into his baby-flesh loincloth.
But whatever. Fuck sense. And fuck you too, BioWare. I'm clearly thinking way too hard for someone who still takes Game Informer seriously. Let's smash some buttons.
So, GenericKingdom wants your steaming, smoldering shitpile of a country. But, instead of holding the line against GenericKingdom, King MacaulayCulkin decides to walk up to the Hell Geyser and pick a fight with Satan himself.
Why?
WHY?!!!!!!!!!!
Why, instead of:
1) Sealing the doorway to Hell, thus saving the world, or
2) Mobilizing your entire population and invading a neighboring country before the Hell Horde wipes out another generation of your followers, or
3) Building a giant wall, or
4) BUILDING A BIG FUCK ARK! OR
5) INVENTING AIRPLANES! OR
6) MAGICKING A NUCLEAR MISSILE INTO EXISTENCE! OR
7) ANYTHING BUT KICKING SATAN IN THE TESTICLES...
No, instead of doing ANY of these things, the King engages Satan...Because he wants village idiots to tell stories of his bravery to their illegitimate children.
That's not a joke. That's his real reason.
This game cost $60, by the way. That's an entire 8.5-hour day of serving fries.
The king's second hand is the voice of Kain.
You may remember him from Soul Reaver, when he responded to grandstanding bullshit by removing the hero's lower jaw, ripping out half his spine, and hurling him headfirst into Cthulhu's vagina.
Never one to disappoint, Kain does what any intelligent character would do and kills the king. And all the king's men. And anyone who ever thought about kicking a demon in the testicles and inviting them to liquify the country his forefathers fought so hard to protect (against that GenericCountry, which is, by the way, still invading).
This act of patriotism marks Kain as the "bad guy" for the rest of the game.
Everyone dies...except your stupid ass. Because you were running an errand at the time. Seriously. They invade Poland while you're lighting a candle in France. But you're still such a shmuck that some random foot soldier knocks you out. Then, Morrigan's dumpster-diving Mom finds you and drags you back to her redneck shack in the middle of the swamp that she shares with her middle-aged daughter.
Cue the banjos.
She then gives you her daughter because...well, bugs-and-dirt stew lasts twice as long with one mouth than with two.
I'm now about thirty minutes into the replay of the game.
On the bright side, I feel so much better about my own life.
On the dark side, I can't believe I'm paying a company to put me through this.
