782 Weeeeeener.

I “finished” Mass Effect 2 a while back.  And I put finished in quotes because the only reason I stopped was that I ran out of content.  If there had been more there for me to do I would likely still be playing.  I played through to the end twice and had much more fun the second time because I took me a while to understand the new leveling system, combat, and what have you.  After playing 2 I’m not sure I could ever go back to playing 1.  As much as I loved Mass Effect, I loved Mass Effect 2 more.  It was by no means perfect.  I spent far too much time searching for ammunition, but on the whole it was a better, less tedious, experience.  When Mass Effect 3 appears I will be ready to put down the Reapers once and for all.

My game of choice for filling the Mass Effect void was Dragon Age: Origins.   I reasoned that Bioware would have made something similar in at least some ways.  It’s much more KOTOR than Mass Effect, which is fine.  I has the same problem with text so small I can’t read anything though.  I don’t know who is responsible for making all the text so fucking tiny, but if I ever meet him I’m going to punch his dick off.  It wasn’t so bad in Mass Effect since a lot of stuff was read aloud, but Dragon Age is not so kind.  In most missions I’m just guessing about what’s going on outside of what is presented on screen.  It just seems odd for a company to write volumes of backstory that no one can read.  Unless the rest of the world is rocking brand new televisions or some shit…

Anyway, I just kind of picked a story at random to try the game out:  Female, city dwelling, Elf, rogue.  I figured that I would be bored by the storyline but would get an idea of how the game worked and could then restart with a character and class I would like better.  Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately depending on how you look at it, the story for that character choice was very compelling.  I played an hour or so to get the hang of things then restarted as the same thing…

My biggest complaint is kind of weird.  It really bothers me that almost all of the armor looks terrible.  Mage gear particularly, but virtually anything you put on looks awful.   I am a long way in at this point and I’m just now finding a few bits of light armor that don’t make the cast look like a truant Renaissance faire.  This is starting to be a big problem with me in newer games.   I forgo better armor for armor that looks better in many cases.  Every so often I find something with choice powers that I can’t bring myself to inflict on the character.  I would kind of like things better if I just got items that adjusted my stats and the visual element was separate.  I don’t know who I need to write to, but this issue needs to be addressed.

Anyway, the leveling system is familiar, so I got that fairly quick.  I let the game auto level the other party members for several levels before bothering to look them over manually.  I was trying to figure out why the fighters kept getting their asses kicked every battle and it turns out the game had been choosing talents that were the exact opposite of the gear each character was wearing.   So every time they got a new skill they couldn’t use it.  Part of the reason I didn’t bother too look any of this over earlier is that I CAN’T READ THE FUCKING TEXT.  After a fair bit of squinting I was able to ascertain what the issue was and my team suddenly became a group of badasses.

Don’t take my complaining to mean I’m not enjoying myself.  I’m completely obsessed and already looking forward to playing the next game where I’ll understand what the hell is going on.  At this point I’m not sure how far off that is.  The goals are much less clear than in Mass Effect.   The ultimate goal seem to be killing a dragon, but there are a lot of jerks between he and I.