Plot of Dragon Age 2 blows as much as plot of Skyrim?
Ok, lemme get this straight...
*spoilers*
Skyrim: You're an epic hero and world needs to be saved. *yawn*
DA2: You should take care of your family and your home, first and foremost, just to be swayed by events, kicking and screaming.
Suffice to say, I've been saving the world in a LOT of RPGs. I have very rarely been taking care of a family, and it's always been just a minor part of the story, not it's centre. But yeah, if your idea of a good story is 'ARNOLD SAVES!' then I could see why you'd think that.

I'm hoping for two things in DA3:

original story and more non-combat interaction

SPOILERS




DA2 has an ending which offered no resolution. I.E., was not an ending at all.

It was not influenced by the character in the slightest.

It applied only some minor window dressing based on party selection.

It offered you no reason to give a %&* about your family to begin with. Like, really, they (or *she* rather, because you only have 1 family member) can go ahead and die already.

If you are going to replace the grand epic with this kind of narrative, how about spending more than an hour developing these characters (or this one character) that I'm supposed to love so much?

Most of this "saving your family" nonsense consists of running 5,000 meaningless "fetch" errands through the same recycled dungeons in order to collect a whole bunch of gold in order to go on a longer, but still quite short and still meaningless cave adventure in order to get back and find that nothing you do matters... like... at all.

In short: you get to the end of DA2, having been bored to tears by running through the same recycled dungeons, doing the same recycled quests only to find that nothing you do makes even the slightest difference and there's really no reason for the story to be told in the first place except as a setup to another title and oh, by the way, here's your crap ending.

The beginning is cool for twenty minutes, at least if you like cinematics. It's just the other 95% of the story that sucks.

Top 3 decisions to make in DA2:

1. Class
2. Gender
3. How bisexual am I?

Oh, and gameplay lasts about 20 hours, tops. And it has ZERO replayability.

I'm at a loss, WTF is there to like about this game? I mean, if you like it, cool... I respect that we all have different tastes and I'm not trying to give you a hard time personally. Honestly though, I consider it the most disappointing gaming experience I've ever had. Ever.

It's as if they took DA:O and said "how can we remove everything that was cool about this and still slap on the same price tag?"

I agree about the civil war thing. It was very poorly handeled aspect in Skyrim and I never felt, that there was an actual war going on in the background. I love the game, but just like in all other Elder Scroll Games, the plot was pretty poorly done.

I really like the civil war mod though. It adds a lot of battle fields to the world map in where the two factions wage war.

CONTINUING SPOILERS
It offered an ending to the Kirkwall conflict, which the more 'important' storyline was about. What was left open was it's influence on the rest of DA's world.

Yes, your character could not influence how a very long-lasting conflict between sides numbering thousands turned out. Of course he couldn't, how could a single person do such a thing? That's what I liked about it. And 'to the slightest' bit is untrue - you couldn't influence how it panned out, but you could influence small things about it.

Huh? I genuinely don't understand what you just said.

It gave enough reason to me. Also, funny bit: Based on whether you choose male or female, your brother or your sister survives. And they have about ... 4 endings or so by themselves each, based on your decisions, which by what you say don't influence anything. Funny that.

Fairly personal. I have found most of the characters in this game to be fairly well developed, and really, really like them. Maybe the writing style just wasn't your cup of tea, maybe you were just biased by the changes from DA:O that you didn't see the game for what it was. As far as I'm concerned, however, the original DA: O was boring and I loved this one.
Which has nothing to do with the story at all. If you want to draw comparisons, calling DA2 on it's fetch quests in comparison with Skyrim is not a good idea :-P

I'll just skip a few more personal bits of your post, and skip to:

It has as much replayability as generally loved, linear, Bioware RPGs. Story of many characters branches quite nicely, and you can influence a lot. Also, Hawke's an awesome protagonist.

I think this is the problem with majority of DA2 criticism. People were generally unable to get over the changes it made from DA: O. And I can't blame them for that, it's really easy to see the differences. But what's important to me in an RPG is a good story and meaningful choices and consequences. DA: O felt ... Bland in this respect. DA 2 seemed like a huge step forward in this department.

Neither plot is worth that much debate.

I'm with Fenix on this. DA 2 is probably the most impressive RPG I played in the recent years. I put it in one line with F:NV and Alpha Protocol.

DA 2 plot and story is a lot like DX 1. Confusing and weird on the superficial level, but incredibly engaging and very well done in themes and personal conflicts.

This. A thousand times this.

DA 2 was an ill-conceived, misguided POS. Even with all the justified criticism it got, it baffles me that I find it still overrated.

Disagree on a massive scale. None of the choices really change anything and you cannot roleplay because Hawke is a defined character. The blood mage chick calls a demon right in front of me and all I can do is say "aww you're naughty but keep going" or "keep going."

It was a decent story with some cool ideas but as an RPG it's terrible.

It depends what you want from an RPG. The "role playing aspect" isn't important for me. I prefer a good, well written and engaging story.

But I agree that you basically hat three hawks to choose from. Which was vastly different from DA:O.

I don't think wanting roleplaying in my roleplaying game is that weird a notion.

Not even three characters really, just three personalities... Snarky Hawk, Angry Hawk, Ambivalent Hawk. You cannot make real roleplaying decisions, which was a bummer.

Do you really want to open up the can of "what is a RPG?" ;-). Is The Witcher a RPG? Geralt didn't even had personalities. He was just flat.

I don't care what you want to call DA 2. Call it a shooter. It was a brilliant game.

Some people associate stats with roleplaying. I don't. Either way you're right, genre doesn't matter, it was a disappointing game no matter the genre.

:P

It's going to be a next-gen game and will likely have higher requirements than either of the two games you mentioned by a significant margin. We're all gonna have to upgrade soon if we want to keep running on high settings, same as it's always been when new consoles come out.