Made by the same company. One is awesme, the other is just ok. Would hate to see the awesome one getting turned into the meh one.

You being one of the primary perpetrators would be the source of this phenomenon, yes.

So I have just ordered my new PC, the Sony F series and its specs are roughly these

i7- Q740
8gb RAM
nVidia 330m with 1gb of graphics memory

So I played Dragon Age on PS3, though I haven't finished it yet. I loved the story, but I hated the graphics and fiddly nature of the game. I also didn't love the combat, so is getting the PC version worth it? I will probably wait for some complete collection sale with Awekening and all the DLC, but is it that much better than the PS3 version?

ps. I don't mind any recomendations about good (and cheap) PC games that I might have missed out on

Dozens of franchises have turned to crap. Would hate to see another one being ruined.

I hav taken a not-inconsiderable amount of time pondering how best to reply to this.

Your endless stream of vitriol directed at the direction taken by the Mass Effect franchise neither communicates anything useful nor serves to educate people in any meaningful way.

You odn't like that Mass Effect 2 shed the strategy game mechanics of pen and paper RPGs in favor of shooter mecanics. I get that.

I also get that this bugs you enough that you have ot mention it every time the possibility of change is brought up in reference to a series you consider more "PC-centric", which is to say less penetrable for newcomers. I get that. Agendas vary from person to person. We've all got one.

I also get that this is tied intrinsically into your view that Mass Effect was an experience which was nont tailored to you, as a PC enthusiast, and therefore it must be inferior for you. THat's fallacious, but I understand the reasoning. I also understand why this causes confirmation bias which results in you coming to conclusions before playing a game (see: Dragon Age 2 in this very topic) and then proclaiming yourself right when the game comes out, because you decided before you ever played it.

I even get that you persist in this behavior in spite of (and probably at least partially because of) the professed and expression affection that other people have for a deviation from the formula you love so much. The barbarians are at the gates of the hallowed PC RPG castle. Fine. That attitude is normal too.

What I don't get, and what is not as acceptable, is your dogged insistence on an absolute metric of quality by which all must adhere and that others are lying to themseleves if they don't.

I'm not going to get into your narrow view of what constitutes a story (you, like many JRPG afficianados in these parts, have confused "story" with "plot"). I'm not going to get into what you consider an RPG and how it's more related to tabletop strategy games tan it is actual roleplaying mechanics. I'm not going to get into any of that.

What I'm getting into is this:

The constant and unrelenting attacks on what you see as an invasion of the archetypes that yo uare familiar with smother conversation and discourse that should be surrounding different topics altogether. This topic is about Dragon Age, and how the PC version of it has marked advantages over the console versions, but it still manages to end up being about the current trends that you find distasteful in RPGs, and how the game's sequel is going to suck before any footage of it even exists.

This is tiresome. It is boring. It is tiring. Yoru constant stream of vitriol over these deviant elements has resulted in you coming across like a one-note choir, stuck in permanent offense against the invading horde. It has made conversation with you on a meaningful level almost impossible because it returns always to these same subjects so long as they are related by even three degrees of relation, and that gives conversations a feeling of sameness.

It's old, Vlad. It's more than old.

Maybe Dragon Age did succeed more than Mass Effect. It would almost have to - it's multiplat, and its absolute numbers including legit PC copies was probably just above that of the original Mass Effect.

That doesn't mean that tey can't try to increase the appeal of Dragon Age by addressing the issues that people cied as bothersom (such as, apparently, its combat). This odes not mean it's goin to suck. This does not mean you have to bring up Mass Effect 2 and how BioWare is slowly ruining WRPGs and turning them into shooters. This does not mean you have to bring up how you think RPGs are necessarily tied into the minmaxing strategy game roots of their forebears. It does not mean that you have to continue to decry an entire school of design every time it comes up, and claim its corruptive influence is encroaching on the things you like best before anything of the sort has even been indicated, much less proven. You're jumping at shadows, at phrases that are not there.

It has to stop sometime, Vlad. You're not getting anywhere. You're not changing any minds

I don't think he is trying to change minds, It's just his opinion. I know he might be continuously going on about what is wrong with many games or the industry and I can see how that can be annoying to some, but it is apparently a great concern of him. I think he should be able to express that if it's not in a trolling way. Don't get me wrong, I agree somewhat with you, especially about him proclaiming a game is bad before it is even released.

Anyway I think I was the one who mentioned Mass Effect the first in this thread, but that was only because I wanted to point out what a great game The Witcher is.

I hav taken a not-inconsiderable amount of time pondering how best to reply to this.

Your endless stream of vitriol directed at the direction taken by the Mass Effect franchise neither communicates anything useful nor serves to educate people in any meaningful way.

You odn't like that Mass Effect 2 shed the strategy game mechanics of pen and paper RPGs in favor of shooter mecanics. I get that.

I also get that this bugs you enough that you have ot mention it every time the possibility of change is brought up in reference to a series you consider more "PC-centric", which is to say less penetrable for newcomers. I get that. Agendas vary from person to person. We've all got one.

I also get that this is tied intrinsically into your view that Mass Effect was an experience which was nont tailored to you, as a PC enthusiast, and therefore it must be inferior for you. THat's fallacious, but I understand the reasoning. I also understand why this causes confirmation bias which results in you coming to conclusions before playing a game (see: Dragon Age 2 in this very topic) and then proclaiming yourself right when the game comes out, because you decided before you ever played it.

I even get that you persist in this behavior in spite of (and probably at least partially because of) the professed and expression affection that other people have for a deviation from the formula you love so much. The barbarians are at the gates of the hallowed PC RPG castle. Fine. That attitude is normal too.

What I don't get, and what is not as acceptable, is your dogged insistence on an absolute metric of quality by which all must adhere and that others are lying to themseleves if they don't.

I'm not going to get into your narrow view of what constitutes a story (you, like many JRPG afficianados in these parts, have confused "story" with "plot"). I'm not going to get into what you consider an RPG and how it's more related to tabletop strategy games tan it is actual roleplaying mechanics. I'm not going to get into any of that.

What I'm getting into is this:

The constant and unrelenting attacks on what you see as an invasion of the archetypes that yo uare familiar with smother conversation and discourse that should be surrounding different topics altogether. This topic is about Dragon Age, and how the PC version of it has marked advantages over the console versions, but it still manages to end up being about the current trends that you find distasteful in RPGs, and how the game's sequel is going to suck before any footage of it even exists.

This is tiresome. It is boring. It is tiring. Yoru constant stream of vitriol over these deviant elements has resulted in you coming across like a one-note choir, stuck in permanent offense against the invading horde. It has made conversation with you on a meaningful level almost impossible because it returns always to these same subjects so long as they are related by even three degrees of relation, and that gives conversations a feeling of sameness.

It's old, Vlad. It's more than old.

Maybe Dragon Age did succeed more than Mass Effect. It would almost have to - it's multiplat, and its absolute numbers including legit PC copies was probably just above that of the original Mass Effect.

That doesn't mean that tey can't try to increase the appeal of Dragon Age by addressing the issues that people cied as bothersom (such as, apparently, its combat). This odes not mean it's goin to suck. This does not mean you have to bring up Mass Effect 2 and how BioWare is slowly ruining WRPGs and turning them into shooters. This does not mean you have to bring up how you think RPGs are necessarily tied into the minmaxing strategy game roots of their forebears. It does not mean that you have to continue to decry an entire school of design every time it comes up, and claim its corruptive influence is encroaching on the things you like best before anything of the sort has even been indicated, much less proven. You're jumping at shadows, at phrases that are not there.

It has to stop sometime, Vlad. You're not getting anywhere. You're not changing any minds.

If you do want to talk about DA 2, then talk in the DA 2 thread, this is for talking about DAO and other PC games that I might get soon

Have you played the first two Fallouts?

How big a PC gamer have you been up to this point?