THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => CLIKC => Topic started by: Ozymandias on 08 Jul 2010, 09:16
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(http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2010/07/500x_da2.jpg)
What is uuuuup (http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/)
* Embark upon an all-new adventure that takes place across an entire decade and shapes itself around every decision you make.
* Determine your rise to power from a destitute refugee to the revered champion of the land.
* Think like a general and fight like a Spartan with dynamic new combat mechanics that put you right in the heart of battle whether you are a mage, rogue, or warrior.
* Go deeper into the world of Dragon Age with an entirely new cinematic experience that grabs hold of you from the beginning and never lets go.
* Discover a whole realm rendered in stunning detail with updated graphics and a new visual style.
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unf unf
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I never actually finished the first one before trading it in.
I really liked it for a while, but after starting 4 or 5 different characters, getting them through almost the entire story (two of which actually made it to the final battle), I just lost interest and gave up. Also, the combat started to piss me off.
That said, I'll probably still play the fuck out of this.
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Yessssss!
Since you're only going to be playing as one character (Hawke) (which is a dumb name) will your lines be voice acted now?
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It's not clear, but it sounds like Bioware might be ditching the Origin concept entirely for the sequel, instead giving you a male/female character with a fixed background like Mass Effect. Like Buttfranklin said, if they're making this choice it's probably so that they can feasibly give the main character voice acting rather than deal with the prospect of having to record the ridiculous number of race-gender possibilities in the first game. I'm a little torn about this. On the one hand, they're taking out an element of character customization and that kind of sucks. On the other, the origins didn't really affect all that much, unless you played an elf and defined your character around hating humans and choosing every dialogue choice to that end, and having static dialogue trees with no voice acting for the protagonist felt really antiquated to me after Mass Effect. I'm sure it would feel even worse for the sequel after ME2 and Alpha Protocol.
That being said, we still know next to nothing about this game from that reveal. Maybe when scans from the GI article hit they'll have more substantive information.
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unf unf
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It's funny how things change - back in Planescape: Torment day, having a fixed PC identity was considered risky. Nowadays extensive character choice is for MMOs.
The long-term effect of games having full VA, of games being interactive films, is that meaningful choice / consequence design becomes much more expensive to implement. Not impossible to implement by any means (Alpha Protocol and the Witcher both had full VA) but riskier to attempt, and a harder sell. But C&C has long been the weakest aspect of Bioware's design philosophy.
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well, if they fixed all the stuff wrong with the first game, then this one will be cool.
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Man, Dragon Age 2: Fuckin' Bitches, Stabbin' Dragons is a waaaaaaay better title than what I had. Dragon Effect: Mass Dragoning With A Reckoning 2.
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fight like a Spartan
but I don't wanna fight in leather undies
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Hopefully they just mean beating the piss out of people with your shield like Alistair.
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Man, Dragon Age 2: Fuckin' Bitches, Stabbin' Dragons is a waaaaaaay better title than what I had. Dragon Effect: Mass Dragoning With A Reckoning 2.
Wherein it is revealed that Archdemons are REAPERS!!
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I could think of worse crossovers.
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EA announced new DLC for Dragon Age 2!! You uncover the ruins of the SSV Normandy and find the cryo-frozen body of no other than COMMANDER SHEPARD!! using his universal translator, but alas missing his weapons and armor, he will keep any snotty elves from making disingenuous assertions about you and your friends! Commander Shepard's gender is always the opposite of the gender of your character so you can pursue a romance with the slick space savior. He saved the Citadel from the Geth... Now he'll save Fereldan from the Blight!
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That page infuriates me. They don't have a trailer yet, they have some really vague explanations of what the game is gonna be about (that sounds like basically every RPG ever) and yet they already have the pre-orders up.
Like, I want this to be good, but I'm not just gonna order it on fucking spec.
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Alpha screens. At least, I really hope they're alpha screens.
(http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/9080/da2firstscreens01b.jpg)
(http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/3362/da2firstscreens02.jpg)
The more I hear about the game the less inspired I get, mainly because it seems like they've abandoned the promise of DA:O and are going in an entirely different direction. Pretty much everything that was halfway interesting in DA:O received a poor reception from fans (which isn't to say they should have liked those things - the origins, for example, were largely bland and half-assed, and the writing was fairly rote), so they look to be abandoning their attempt to incorporate their strategic RPG past with their new cinematic aspirations, and instead are going into full-on ARPG mode. It may turn out well (I'll certainly play through it at least once) but it's somewhat saddening that Bioware has officially let go of the Infinity template. I wasn't the biggest fan of DA:O but I think it could have done better with a sequel in the same vein.
I'm going back through DA:O as a city elf fighter, aside from the Bioware Signature Series drama rape which irritated me some, it's more and more apparent that they need to get away from the unibody system with DA2 - all humanoids in DA:O, be they Darkspawn, elves, dwarves or humans, used the same set of animations for all actions. After awhile it really shows. I don't know if Bioware has the resources of Blizzard, but one of the nice things about WoW is that there are unique animations for all classes, or so I'm told.
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Frankly, the impression I'm getting from this is that it's Fable, but not by Molyneux.
Which is a concept I can get behind so much I'm practically fucking it in the ass.
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Fable games are shit aside from a bit of mildly amusing atmospherics. I shouldn't have to like a game despite the mechanics. Example: Jade Empire.
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Right.
That's where the "not by Molyneux" part comes in.
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Eh, see, I'd hold that Molyneaux's people insisting upon a whole mess of stupid shit being added onto an otherwise completely generic ARPG is what separates it from other ARPGs. Since you know, ARPGs are almost uniformly shit.
And to be honest, up until MA2, I'd hold that Bioware is just as good (read: bad) at actual gameplay mechanics as Lionhead.
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A couple of tangential links, first SA doesn't take kindly to internets not taking kindly to whatever minimal reveal the DA2 announcement was (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/video-game-article/dragon-age-reaction.php), and on the other hand, the co-founder of the Escapist on how the gaming industry is now the movie industry (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/publishers-note/7688-Publisher-Note-10-E-for-Everyone-Except-Me.2).
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More details (http://greywardens.com/dragon-age-2-facts/)
Sounds like A) they're sort of snagging Alpha Protocol's conversation system and mixing it into ME2's, B) the PC and console versions are going to be even more different from each other than DA:O with the PC version retaining its Baldur's Gate roots, and the console ones moving toward ARPGs, and C) the narrative might actually be a deeply personal story to Hawke and not really a massive epic like DA:O.
Also,
Eh, see, I'd hold that Molyneaux's people insisting upon a whole mess of stupid shit being added onto an otherwise completely generic ARPG is what separates it from other ARPGs. Since you know, ARPGs are almost uniformly shit.
And to be honest, up until MA2, I'd hold that Bioware is just as good (read: bad) at actual gameplay mechanics as Lionhead.
At this point, I'd hold that I'm not really sure I have anything more to discuss with you since we apparently have such widely divergent opinions that I can't ever seeing myself even coming close to agreeing with you.
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For me, playing the first Dragon Age was really saddening. It felt like I was playing a 6 year old game that had a slight graphical upgrade. I'm not entirely sold yet on all these new features and changes I'm not sold on tons of changes as opposed to improvements.
There are definite things I want them to improve with the sequel, some of which they've talked about and some I was kind of hoping for.
I love the idea of a name and I think it's insanely important for the character to talk and to improve the dialogue options, I hated reading my whole response and would much rather choose the kind of response than to read it all out and then choose. Giving a voice to my character is possibly one of the greatest improvements they could make to the game.
New art style is really iffy for me, I really really liked the realism of the first game and I would have preferred better art direction, more varied environments, and better graphics than a new "cartoony" art style.
Gameplay refinements for consoles would be quite awesome, never really dug how it played for me. And I seriously think the BIGGEST improvement they could make to this game would be to make each party member unique as opposed to just having specialties. 2 Mages, 2 Rogues, 400 Warriors? Give me a reason to choose certain characters like giving them all unique skills as well as having moral standards. I really hated how the first game was just like playing a single player MMO.
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A couple of tangential links, first SA doesn't take kindly to internets not taking kindly to whatever minimal reveal the DA2 announcement was (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/video-game-article/dragon-age-reaction.php), and on the other hand, the co-founder of the Escapist on how the gaming industry is now the movie industry (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/video-game-article/dragon-age-reaction.php).
Both links go to the SA article doggo
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fxd
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the co-founder of the Escapist on how the gaming industry is now the movie industry (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/publishers-note/7688-Publisher-Note-10-E-for-Everyone-Except-Me.2).
you forgot the crucial part where it's the movie industry as opposed to the music or book industry and leaves out crucial information, like say the entire way each industry works and also that the movie industry works at putting out niche titles on the regular too (viz. Fox Searchlight) and how basically all of this article is wrong whenever it makes an analogy which sucks because it has salient points w/r/t expanding budgets and publisher expectations and reception within culture
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At this point, I'd hold that I'm not really sure I have anything more to discuss with you since we apparently have such widely divergent opinions that I can't ever seeing myself even coming close to agreeing with you.
In my defense, I meant to type "Action gameplay mechanics." I think Bioware did fine with Baldur's Gate and such. I just thought Jade Empire and Mass Effect 1 showed that they weren't quite there when it came to action games.
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So, it sounds like DA2 for PC is going to use the same, great control scheme as all of Bioware's RPGs, which is... well, great, but not very intuitive. The PS3 and 360 versions are going to be more action oriented though, so I guess they're going with the idea that pc-gamers are nerds who like to strategize, while console gamers wants to see gore without having to think much to do that. I like that they say that the console version is tailored for the strengths of the PS3 and the 360 - isn't the problem really that it's pretty cumbersome to get around the advanced combat menus on a PS3/360-controller? It'll be interesting to see if they will approach strategic group fighting in a different way altogether, or just cut some of the strategy out of it. It could be interesting to see something like the kind of party control from the great promo movie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iFrHRaH0Os) for the first game - tell your goons what you want done, and they'll do it, without you having to directly order them around.
"Intense action" sounds fun if it can be combined with "intense strategy", because without that, DA2 will just be a Dungeon Siege copy with rpg-storytelling, and we donæt really need that with DS3 coming out soon.
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A couple of tangential links, first SA doesn't take kindly to internets not taking kindly to whatever minimal reveal the DA2 announcement was (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/video-game-article/dragon-age-reaction.php), and on the other hand, the co-founder of the Escapist on how the gaming industry is now the movie industry (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/publishers-note/7688-Publisher-Note-10-E-for-Everyone-Except-Me.2).
To be fair, that SA article is a completely accurate skewering of how the message board culture turns even the slightest bit of information into a melodramatic catastrophe. I actually stopped reading the SA thread on DA2 after the first 3 pages because it read almost exactly like that article, only they weren't being sarcastic. People actually used the phrases 'Dragon Effect' and 'when will they talk about a cover system'. It was fucking absurd. The SA forums are better than the vast majority of video game-based forums but I still generally stick to threads for console games because there's a contingent of the archetypal bitter, self-important PC gamers who are completely intolerable.
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"Intense action" sounds fun if it can be combined with "intense strategy", because without that, DA2 will just be a Dungeon Siege copy with rpg-storytelling, and we donæt really need that with DS3 coming out soon.
Well considering it's being made by the brilliant programming and gameplay design teams of Obsidian we probably do need that. (heyoooo)
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A couple of tangential links, first SA doesn't take kindly to internets not taking kindly to whatever minimal reveal the DA2 announcement was (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/video-game-article/dragon-age-reaction.php), and on the other hand, the co-founder of the Escapist on how the gaming industry is now the movie industry (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/publishers-note/7688-Publisher-Note-10-E-for-Everyone-Except-Me.2).
To be fair, that SA article is a completely accurate skewering of how the message board culture turns even the slightest bit of information into a melodramatic catastrophe. I actually stopped reading the SA thread on DA2 after the first 3 pages because it read almost exactly like that article, only they weren't being sarcastic. People actually used the phrases 'Dragon Effect' and 'when will they talk about a cover system'. It was fucking absurd. The SA forums are better than the vast majority of video game-based forums but I still generally stick to threads for console games because there's a contingent of the archetypal bitter, self-important PC gamers who are completely intolerable.
Oh you don't have to tell me, I'm a member of the Obsidian forums, which are basically the same 4 or 5 thread templates repeated over and over and over (DRM will kill us all / Bethsoft's Fallout Sucks For These Reasons / Make another KOTOR plz / Bioware is the Best Ever [alternatively Bioware is the Worst Ever] / Japan boo, Eastern Europe yay).
All that having been said, I think there are legitimate gripes to be had with Bioware's design philosophies, and I've repeated those to the point where I don't really need to anymore.
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C) the narrative might actually be a deeply personal story to Hawke and not really a massive epic like DA:O.
The more I think medium hard about this point the more I hope it's true because that would make this the Odyssey to DA:O's Iliad and that is a concept I can shake hands with.
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it better be true because otherwise they're just going to redo da:o but with voice acting and people saying your character's name
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I would love a smaller scale story to death. I'm not really that terribly interested in Helm's Deep: The Game, to be honest, and even if I were, making a game that can approach the kinda visual standard required to really make such a thing suitably impressive is an uphill battle. Not really trying to hate on the betrayal at Ostagar there or anything, but when you have cinematic aspirations you're going to have to face up to the fact that your audience is going to make cinematic comparisons, consciously or not. Anyway, I'd say I love Bioware games best for the li'l things, not the saving the world stuff. Shit, I can barely even remember what Irenicus's big ol' plan was in BGII, and I played the hell out of that game. He wanted to get into the elf pantheon, right? Whatever. Fucker took my party members, so he was gonna die regardless. Honestly, with enough writing the DA:O team could have got me to sign off on a "Let's just murder the shit out of Arl Howe" or "Catch the Blood Mage who was also your friend," plot line if they had wanted to and promised me more good dialog and less big cutscenes. I'm that easy.
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I really liked the first one, so I am intentionally trying not to read anything more about it until there is actually some meaty info online, because I'd rather not read dribs and drabs and form an expectation (as I stupidly do sometimes) then have it be not at all like I imagined. I am tentatively enthused, though.
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I must admit, I rapidly became bored with DA:O, don't get me wrong I loved the setting and liked a lot of the characters and choices, but the combat was so indefensibly bad, especially on console that I wanted to put my head through a wall. That and the fact that some of the characters got on my nerves, and that sometimes the talking just went on for way too long. That and the fact that it was so easy to accidently bugger yourself through making the wrong sort of party/PC choices.
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I really liked the first one, so I am intentionally trying not to read anything more about it until there is actually some meaty info online, because I'd rather not read dribs and drabs and form an expectation (as I stupidly do sometimes) then have it be not at all like I imagined. I am tentatively enthused, though.
I'll put $20 on DA2 being about saving the world from something.
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Don't piss on my dreams. :cry:
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i bet it will be, but while me2 was about THE COLLECTOR THREAT, it was really about a bunch of people and their personal problems, and that made the game way more interesting, and made the actual plot more compelling by 1) depicting the threatened worlds as places inhabited by people who were part of a massive network of intricately connected cultures, 2) establishing the people going on a "suicide mission" as more than just redshirts. bioware's capable of doing small-scale stories wrapped inside big overarching things, but the question is if they'll be able to make both compelling simultaneously. they haven't really managed to yet.
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I think BG2 was pretty good with it, actually. The core campaign was about saving the Player Character, the expansion / finale was about the fate of the world.
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Aakduce, a fan of Greywardens.com (and Dragon Age, of course), was lucky enough to hang out at the San Diego Comic Con the other day. Even better — he had the chance to hang out with BioWare’s Evil Chris Priestly and Mike Laidlaw. Evil Chris, as you may know, is the social voice of all things BioWare, and by extension, Dragon Age; and Mike Laidlaw is the lead designer behind the epic-ness that is the story of Dragon Age 2. Check out Aakduce’s thoughts on the Dragon Age 2 preview — and some of the answers he received when questioning the dynamic duo — below.
“When I got in, Mike was giving a speech about how they were ‘keeping what worked well’ in Dragon Age: Origins — and scrapping the rest. He also outlined the highlights of the game (most of which are already known):
• Story takes place over 10 years
• Hawke (male or female) and family escaped from Lothering just before it was burned to the ground by darkspawn
• Combat is more fast-paced and bloody — BioWare is going for the “300″ Spartan warrior feel here
• You can still use a “Pause and Play” gaming style for strategy
• Casters get dynamic finishers now, like the slow motion kills of warriors in Dragon Age: Origins
• Hawke is fully voice-acted
As soon as I got the chance, I played the demo! Here’s what I discovered:
The story is told by two different narrators who tend to embellish how powerful you really are, and the intro filled out the story of Ostagar (in the same stained glass fashion of DA:O). The game definitely played a bit more like Mass Effect 2, what with the voice acting, as well as in the general gameplay. At one point, I was offered the chance to utterly destroy mobs of darkspawn that were coming at me, or have the mage that was with me (Bethany, I think her name was) blast them. Mage spells in the demo were crushing prison and mind blast — which worked to marvelous effect, of course. The spellbook worked well, but, at least in the demo, there were no tooltips. When I reached the end of the preview, just as it was obvious everyone was going to die, a dragon came out of nowhere and, graciously, killed all of the darkspawn. The dragon then morphed into a familiar old lady with long grey hair — guess who, anyone?
I also had the chance to play a new DLC that is coming out soon. I didn’t get the name, but it was one of the hardest dungeons I have ever played, even on easy — at least in the pre-build that I was playing, anyway. In my chat with Chris Priestly, he told me that BioWare is going to keep making downloadable content for Dragon Age: Origins, and that they are planning to keep the DA:O franchise going for as long as they can — so the changes in Dragon Age 2 aren’t necessarily the end for more traditional roleplayers. There is also likely to be a third full Dragon Age game — and Chris told me that they are not yet done with Morrigan’s story.
I asked Chris about some of the feedback from people who feel that Dragon Age 2 isn’t a real RPG. He said that he felt that players were mostly put off by the fact that they can’t port their character from the first game, and that the only real difference in DA2 over DA:O for roleplayers was that they can’t choose their race. He also mentioned that Dragon Age: Origins only had a timeline of two years, while Dragon Age 2 spans 10 years, and that choosing the path BioWare did with DA2 has given them more ways in which to tell the epic story.
Overall, the game had a great look and feel. I was impressed — and I can’t wait to play it!”
Thanks again to Aakduce for sending in some impressions from Comic Con and letting us know what it was like to get your hands on some of the new content.
link (http://greywardens.com/2010/07/exclusive-comic-con-impressions/)
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KvP you should probably put a spoiler warning in front of that blurb. Definitely a spoiler about shapeshifting dragons which makes Flemeth less of a surprise... Also that she's still alive for us who haven't played it. At least, the default game world is that she's alive.
Any mention of importing saves from DA:O to DA2?
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I'm pretty sure that's off the table. I had heard something along the lines of KOTOR2, in which you are given direct questions about your decisions in the first game, but I don't know how accurate that is.
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I would assume "no", as you're a completely different character.
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That doesn't necessarily preclude a savegame transfer. Seeing the consequences of your decisions as one character from the perspective of another ought to be gratifying on some level. That having been said, a canon timeline is the easiest way to go and therefore probably the preferred way.
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Yeah, I guess. Accommodating for the background of the hero as well as who killed who and suchforth in the first one might get a bit painful.
Also: The hero they showed in most of the trailers etc (human, seemingly warrior, stupid tattoo) looked fucking idiotic and I hope we don't get stuck with something similar. I imagine they'll do something similar to ME where they give suggested looks for male & female Hawke but allow you to customise?
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On that note, why do most of the tattoos in these games look absolutely dumb? And if they are going to support tattoos, why can't we import our own designs? That would be pretty great.
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I'm 100% certain that we would, one week later, see a ZP where yatzhee has made a guy with a dick tatooed over his face, and named him "Dickface". But it's a pretty great idea. I didn't know, but it seems like there's a bunch of mods for DA:O (a google check finds a mod manager, so I guess there's some), so it shouldn't be that hard to implement if you put some work into it, or find someone who wants to do it for you.
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Are you maybe aware that Fable already did this?
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dunno about y'all but i'm perfectly comfortable with a game that does at least SOME of the legwork for me w/r/t character design
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I'd rather have a well-designed main character than 20 different varieties bleh. That's why it always kinda bummed me out that with ME I had to choose between worse voice acting or worse character models. Vanderloo clone Shep's design isn't exactly inspired, but they clearly put some work into it and the shaved head let them handily sidestep some of their weaknesses.
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Rumors abound (from Gamestar or somesuch site) that DA:2 will see the removal of the PC top-down view. It wasn't in the 360 version of DA:O and I never played with it but as you could probably expect, there is much gnashing of teeth and tearing of clothes and grim pronouncements.
In more positive news, rogues are apparently getting a redesign so they're not so much 3.5 D&D-ish (that is, fighters with lower chance to hit but better special attacks) and there will apparently be party interjection in dialogue to a greater extent than they've had since KOTOR day.
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this sucks, they should have taken the class/race differences thing and ran with it. in origins, it started off really in your face but as the game went on, it kinda didnt matter as much. i need to finish that game i guess, i got all the way to landsmeet then had to leave the country*, and when i got back my roommate returned it. good roommate i guess. anyway i did really enjoy choosing my starting storyline, but the combat did suck. mages were probably the best.
also more sex please
(*had a FBI search warrant out for me)
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Those last two standalone lines don't really go well together, just putting it out there.
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(http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/3458/da2races.jpg)
lawl.
and they're retconning qunari to look more like ogres, I see.
Also notice how the human female looks suggestively amorous while the other females don't.
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What is up with human female's legs?
Does she have Rickets?
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Why are all of the women except the Qunari on tip-toes?
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The dwarf isn't. It's because they're barefoot I'm guessing?
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I think the simplest explanation is that your average fantasy game artist probably loses the ability to draw women standing normally well before they have the opportunity to draw someone who isn't wearing costume heels and absurdly impractical armor.
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I see that their "different standards of beauty" all include large norks and rock-hard muscles. Top notch.
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I wonder if this means we'll be able to bang a Qunari
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Extrapolating from Mass Effect 2, yes.
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i think you can see the elf's package
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and they're retconning qunari to look more like ogres, I see.
I'm not sure about the horns and overall design but I do appreciate the attempt to make them a more visually distinct race.
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I would bang that dwarf chick so hard.
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and they're retconning qunari to look more like ogres, I see.
I'm not sure about the horns and overall design but I do appreciate the attempt to make them a more visually distinct race.
They should make them in to unicorn people.
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(http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gawker_tv/2010/01/unicorn_samurai.png)
???
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You hit the nail on the head.
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I see that their "different standards of beauty" all include large norks and rock-hard muscles. Top notch.
Also, hourglass figures.
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I have to say I kinda liked the long armed female dwarves in DA:O. Weirdly sexy.
I hope there's a reason that the female human is the only one with a tattoo. And a facial one at that.
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I would bang that dwarf chick so hard.
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I would bang that dwarf chick so hard.
DEBRAAAAA
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Eh, as long as it's better than Awakening. Awakening's one saving grace was Oghren and Anders (too lazy to check spelling) constantly going back and forth at each other, because it reminded me of how my best friend and I argue over whether melee or magic/range is better (except I'm the tall one and he's the short one lol).
And Oghren has the best lines in the game, but that's another matter entirely.
And here's to hoping mages aren't stupidly overpowered again in DA 2.
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I rather liked most of the NPCs. Leliana was the only one I'd say I disliked. I even have a grudging regard for Zevran, and I've never liked elves. He and Oghren had some good exchanges, even if a dwarf berserker and elven assassin is kinda cliched. DA isn't my favorite game by a long shot, but I'll take more of 'em.
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Zevran was so annoying, why did the male bi character have to be Euro-trash.
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He was annoying at times, yeah, but he had just enough barely decent conversations where I consider him a net plus during my "smart ass warden" run, even if I usually punted his ass to the camp never to be heard from again in the rest of my games. Unfortunately, I also don't always feel as annoyed as I should at the short stick gays and bisexuals get in video games and culture at large as far as characterizations go. It does seem that if you're bisexual that the media will portray you as a slutty and helpless while secretly craving the stability of a relationship if you're a woman and as a greasy eurotrash lounge lizard if you're male. I try to be proactive about such things but sometimes I just don't really viscerally reject these things as strongly as my voting habits would imply. Stupid privilege. Anyway, it's not like I think Bioware was malicious or anything, and Leliana had her shit together for the most part even if I have a tough time not just saying "Nah, it's alright crazy lady" every time she talks about the Maker.
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Zevran was so annoying, why did the male bi character have to be Euro-trash.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvBg0es44ws
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Those last two standalone lines don't really go well together, just putting it out there.
the last sentence was a footnote
but the more sex part, maybe i could have been more clear. i meant i want more fucking penetration in the game. i wore out every ho in that whore house and i banged a few of my teammates but i'd like to just be able to bugger any person off the dirtpath
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Go play a Leisure Suit Larry game?
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First Trailer- No Gameplay Footage (http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid47033724001?bctid=586540293001)
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My inner 14yo is so fucking stoked.
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Just putting this here because the DA:O thread is pretty well dead these days.
I've been playing DA again, and man, I forgot how much I love Dog. I understand why so many people think he's kinda crappy-- it's tough to argue with the "Shale, 2-3 Mages or maybe a Rogue" power gamer crowd if you want to talk pure efficiency and spike damage-- but on the other hand, holy shit is Dog fast. He's a perfect companion for a lazy gamer like me. I just set up his tactics so that he Overwhelms an enemy mage straight away and then just runs down anything that attacks my PC (a rogue this time around-- I felt like doing a pretty basic human PC/Alistair/Morrigan/Dog run). This usually results in one dead mage VERY quickly followed by Dog rounding up all the archers so they drop their bows and start wimpily hacking away at him. It's even better when he then runs off to rejoin the melee scrum (again, automatic, because he's set to assist the PC and Alistair). The archers sometimes chase him for a bit but they cannot catch him, because again, holy shit, is Dog fast. It makes me feel sorta bad for Dog because he gets hated on sometimes and the internets isn't very good at quantifying anything but DPS and his raw skirmishing speed isn't something that you can just math out easy. Fights take a bit longer than with some of my old power gamey groups, but with Dog around I'm pretty sure I'm actually doing a lot less clicking just because he is so good at running around and pulling the faces off of ranged attackers.
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The mod that lets you have both 3 companions and your dog is definitely a favourite of mine.
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That does sound kinda nice, since honestly I think the best argument against Dog is that he isn't exactly chatty during quests. From a game balance point of view I'd actually be willing to argue that for newbies at least he's no worse than using Sten since the only way to really use 2 handers correctly is to sit there and babysit them so they drop a special attack in between the deadspace in their auto attack animations.
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Spoilers for DA1 follow!
So for all of us who thought that Morrigan's child would be some sort of setup for a sequel... Surprise! It's DLC! (http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/99415-dragon-age-origins-witch-hunt-dlc-announced.html)
With this and Fallout 3 I'm wondering if we won't see more endgame decisions being parceled out on a pay-per-view basis.
The dreaded Archdemon has been slain and the advance of the darkspawn halted by a lone, heroic Grey Warden. The kingdom rejoices, but at least one question remains: what happened to Morrigan? The sorceress joined the Wardens cause, but it is said her true purpose was not revealed until the eve of the last battle. She vanished into the shadows, and while rumors claimed she crossed over the mountains into Orlais no trace of her path could be found. She was never heard from again... until now. Nearly a year has passed since the Archdemon's death, and word has reached the Wardens that Morrigan has returned to Ferelden. She has been sighted in the southern wilderness where she was first encountered. Is it truly her? If it is, then why is she here and what secret does she carry with her? The Warden heads into the forest to find out and tie up this last loose end once and for all.
Key Features:
• Confront Morrigan in this dramatic conclusion to the Origins storyline
• Earn powerful rewards that transfer into your Awakening and Origins campaign
• Import your character from Origins or Awakening or create a new, high-level hero!
"dramatic conclusion" = Decide if you want to kill Morrigan.
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Several real torrents (PC version) are up now for your sampling pleasure. I intend to give it a go with my rogue when it finishes downloading later this morning.
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i hope they make you decide if you want to kill your character's kid
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First Trailer- No Gameplay Footage (http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid47033724001?bctid=586540293001)
I was really hoping the ugly horned dude killed the heroic guy, showing that you can be who you want and can play how you want. Instead we get the usual "generic good-looking hero with inner demons" schtick.
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i hope they make you decide if you want to kill your character's kid
Steam is taking forever to update ("download suspended"; the worse thing about steam) DA:O so I can't play it yet - arrrgh.
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http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/dragon-age-2-gameplay/350241 (http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/dragon-age-2-gameplay/350241)
Link to the first dragon age combat video (all be it a handheld version). My first impression? Basically that it handles a bit more like dynasty warriors and a bit less like "press x and wait till your abilities come back".
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Everyone is positively shocked to learn that The Collector's Edition will include an extra "playable character" (http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/info/order/). I'm not sure if that means we'll have a different PC model, or Bioware is just being careless with its terminology and they mean a CNPC ala Shale.
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Not Bioware, but EA.
Bioware didn't pull that "extra content for 2 bucks" crap until they got bought by EA.
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That might be because such things didn't happen that much until after EA bought them? As is I don't mind too much, just gives me an extra reason to preorder it.
Also, you may not remember Isabella (she's the pirate captain you can sleep with to get the Duelist specialisation) but she's back with a brand new character model as Hawkes love interest.
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i... i don't think you sleep with her to get the duelist thing, i think she duels you and that teaches you how to duel
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If you sleep with her, she'll "teach" you all about dueling.
Otherwise you catch her cheating, or have Leliana catch her.
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DA2 gameplay (http://kotaku.com/5683891/from-russia-with-love-five-minutes-of-dragon-age-ii-gameplay). As expected, looks a lot like a fantasy Mass Effect 2, right down to pausing the action for powers.
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I forget; are the console and PC versions still going to be different?
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PC version will probably end up playing like the Witcher at this rate :mrgreen:
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I don't like it, and I don't like the people criticising the people complaining about it & calling them whiners. It's supposed to be a fucking RPG, I hope the PC version actually looks more like one.
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PC version will probably end up playing like the Witcher at this rate :mrgreen:
That's OK, Witcher is awesome.
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Eh, if I wanted to play an action-rpg I'd go and play an action-rpg. Wasn't Dragon Age: Origins supposed to be some sort of a "spiritual successor" to Baldur's Gate 2? DA2 is looking less and less like a traditional crpg.
I really want to like DA2. I really do. DA: O was the best game I've played in recent memory, but after the disappointment that was Awakening/Witch Hunt/pretty much every recent Bioware dlc I'm starting to lose faith.
Don't disappoint me, Bioware.
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So with the latest character concept they've unleashed a monster - even at this early juncture he seems to be surpassing Tali as the Bioboards creepster obsessive object of choice.
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Varric is a total Lothario.
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That's not the guy, the new guy is a white Drizz't with glowing tats.
But Varric is plenty creepy.
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For reference:
(http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/5770/elfda2.png)
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I like how the Crow Assassins are so badass that they can walk around in hilariously literal-minded uniforms and still do their jobs.
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So get this: The dialog system is a "stance" system wherein you choose a tone and what your character says is based on that tone. You can just choose one and just let it go for the entire conversation!
It's so brilliant it's a wonder no one's done it before!
Also, PC UI pic, apparently
(http://img.waffleimages.com/462c767bc8535375336789eb01b9acf743f89109/33c8xi0.jpg)
Apparently they just had a bunch of journalists come in and they were given the current build of the game to play.
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So get this: The dialog system is a "stance" system wherein you choose a tone and what your character says is based on that tone. You can just choose one and just let it go for the entire conversation!
It's so brilliant it's a wonder no one's done it before!
So I don't know nothin' bout these vidya games all you kids are talkin' 'bout so I dunno if this is sarcastic or not. Is this sarcastic? I feel like it has been used before, but I'd be hard pressed to think of where. At the very least it reminds me of being able to choose the "stance" of yr units in RTS games, be it passive (units only attack when ordered), defensive (units attack when attacked) or belligerent (units attack any enemy units within range).
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Alpha Protocol did it, and it was one of the better systems in the game.
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Over at SA people are having a lot of fun with the awesome rationale Bioware has given for not making Friendly Fire a toggle (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/5490589):
Attaching things to toggles is great, but if someone flips that on and doesn't know that it will suddenly make their "Easy" game not quite so Easy anymore... well, that wouldn't be good.
Toggles need to work for everyone, and we need to balance accordingly. An option that's more for advanced users is the kind of thing you'd stick in as an .ini file setting, I'd suspect. Feel free to ask for something different, but I think there's more affected by such a change than you'd think.
Bioware: Sensitive to the needs of those who don't understand how binary switches work.
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Isn't that nice of them.
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That's kind of a bullshit way of representing their argument. They're not saying or even implying that people don't understand what a binary toggle is. They're saying people may not realize the extent to which a friendly fire toggle could invalidate the descriptions attached to the overall difficulty slider. Considering the power of AoE spells in DA:O I can easily imagine a scenario in which easy mode with friendly fire toggled on is more difficult than a default or even advanced level of difficulty that doesn't feature friendly fire. That's a mixed signal and if you want to appeal to mass audiences rather than just the people who have habitually played RPGs I can understand why you'd want clean that shit up. Remember, plenty of normal gamers will expect a polished experience with whatever standard menu options they select. If people are just expected to grab difficulty options ala carte you're bound to end up with a few users who would have had a better experience if they had chosen a combination of settings the developers had actively balanced the game around. That's why I think that even if they cave on this they should probably throw such options into some kind of advanced difficulty tab rather than give the impression that they had everyone in mind.
TLDR version: I'm fine with the idea that Bioware doesn't really want to cater to those people who want to play nightmare mode but only if they can spam magic spells while safely loitering around in their personal swirling cloud of death.
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I don't think it's a bad idea to make AoE integrated into difficulty sliders (indeed, that's the way it's always been). I'm just pointing out the fact that DA2's lead designer is a functional retard.
I mean, that is an incredibly dumb statement, even after his comparison between the Qunari and the Islamic faith which actually seemed to freak out the people who should probably be keeping better tabs on what he writes in public.
Also there seems to be some consternation over the newly revealed White Drizz't character -
Once slave to a Tevinter magister, Fenris was altered: lyrium was burned into his flesh, its magic both stripping his memory as well as changing him forever. He became a living weapon, and eventually used his power to escape his chains. Now he finds himself in a strange land with no friends—and a former master that refuses to let him be.
Because there is apparently a fantasy writer named Joe Ambercrombie who featured in his work a character who was turned into a living weapon by magic tattoos he had. His name was, you guessed it, Fenris.
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I have not seen more moaning about utterly pointless things (and you know, Ad Hominem attacks on one of the developers) since the actual bioware forums, so that's at least an impressive showing by KvP.
And I had a little look at that, but Fenris in that novel seems to be a "Dragon with an Agenda" I couldn't find much refference to tattoo'ing on TVtropes.
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I don't see anything wrong with their explanation on the (non) inclusion of a friendly fire toggle. 'Casual' (for want of a better word) gamers won't necessarily realize how much more difficult that could make the game, and thus could have their experience ruined or at the very least degraded. People who understand what kind of effects it will have should be more than capable of using the .ini.
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Unless they're playing on a console.
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But, everybody knows that only halo-players with 3-second attention spans play on consoles!
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And I had a little look at that, but Fenris in that novel seems to be a "Dragon with an Agenda" I couldn't find much refference to tattoo'ing on TVtropes.
I haven't read the books but the people on SA who have are pretty adamant. I mean the least they could do is choose another name.
I'm waiting in anticipation for Dragon Age 3: "I spent all night trying to figure out how to carefully preserve the balance in our game, and then it hit me - the Player Character should not be able to be killed by enemies. It just defeats the purpose of the combat if you can fail."
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Worked in Fable. As long as the storyline is good or the game itself fun to play most people are willing to forgive things like death.
And well, the guy was called "Fenris the feared" and the only descriptor I could find of him was as a "mountain of muscle". I mean it might just be that bioware simply decided to do something different. And considering that "other fenris" was essentially a villain's henchman/starscream I fail to see how its like the lithe elven assassin other than in name and tat's. Its like saying that "Oh Louis the XIV and XV were the same because they lived most of their lives in Versailles, had mistresses and ran France". There are similiarities but they are not the same.
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On the contrary, if Louis XIV and XV were both fabricated characters by different authors in different universes, there would be a problem there.
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Worked in Fable. As long as the storyline is good or the game itself fun to play most people are willing to forgive things like death.
unfortunately fable is also not very good
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Oh no the people on SA are adamant whatever will Bioware do
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Maybe, personally I don't see the trouble myself, and to me Fenris sounds more like a "hero of another story" I mean think about it, he's amnesiac, good at fighting and running away from his mentors and responsibilities. To me that sounds like the start of another story by bioware.
Hey! I liked Fable!
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I think Bioware might just cry into their piles of money all night because some goons can abstract one character to sound like another
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"Make them stop!" they will wail "This might cost us upwards of $1000 if some neckbeards keep making fun of our multi-million dollar franchises."
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There is an "edit" function dude.
And yeah I think that people may be stretching it a bit, personally I'm getting this anyway, so I don't mind too much. Its just seems a bit of a silly thing to devote time to attacking.
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Time ridiculing David Gaider is never wasted.
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There is an "edit" function dude.
How have we gone all this time without somebody noticing this?
Finally, there is no need for all that dreadful double posting!
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I just think there doesn't seem to be any point to posting again when you have to do minor alterations or additions to a prior statement.
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oh my god, fuck my bitch johnny c, fuck my bitch please based john, oh my god, so based
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oh my god, fuck my bitch johnny c, fuck my bitch please based john, oh my god, so based
hey, look, i found the edit button
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We're not friends anymore, Johnny C :x
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A+ boarding
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Mod powers open to abuse you say, where do I apply?
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you can always try filling out our application form, just google "goatse.cx"
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I may be hopelessly Naiive, but you could have at least disguised the hideousness Johnny.
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I may be hopelessly Naiive,
I may be hopelessly Naiive,
I may be hopelessly Naiive,
what is this I don't even
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Piss poor spelling after just waking up?
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holy shit did i actually goatse you
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this just became my favourite thread in the entire forum although also i'm seriously 100% sincerely sorry
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I thought naiive was intended as a way of showing the diæresis in naïve, but that was ingenuous of me...
Hey Johnny, we must stop meeting like this!
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in threads where i appear to be the worst mod ever?
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i prefer using naïf, as in, "i didn't realise i referred a naïf to the hall of the goatman"
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On the contrary, if we characterize something as faulty, replicating its ideas becomes improvement or rehabilitation instead of appropriation. To be fair to Bioware this process has been going on with Tolkien for a long time with a lot of writers. I take Tolkienesque high fantasy and add a bit of slavery / genocide / rape, and my debt to him is minimized as my work is more "realistic" and less "fantastical" than mere fantasy. I'm serious! Thus it's "dark" fantasy instead of fantasy, as though that really meant something.
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wrong thread, this is the thread where i goatsed a dude
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Curses!
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So i got the Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition at a pretty good price and I am surprised by one thing. Instead of having the content on a disc that I can play off of they make you download all of the content, even Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening.
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I guess at this point they've gotten over the "some people don't have internet" hump.
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That's not the problem. All the stuff is already on the second disc, but instead of going straight into it you have to download everything on the disc to your hard drive to play it. At least you get to choose what you want to download instead of all of it together.
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Actually I didn't look at the thing, I just know what it is and seemed to have confussed you all with rubbish phrasing.
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bummer, this thread bores me now
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awww someone was proud of himself huh
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That's not the problem. All the stuff is already on the second disc, but instead of going straight into it you have to download everything on the disc to your hard drive to play it. At least you get to choose what you want to download instead of all of it together.
Welcome to the new DRM, same as the old DRM
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So they've announced that they're replacing the influence meter with one that goes from "rival" to "friend" instead of "hate" to "love". The practical effect is that no matter how much you fuck with your party members they are 100% loyal.
Really I'm just excited that we might see this scene (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdnIRIJ61EU) reenacted 8-)
Also hey this comes out in like two months.
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Ordering this weekend nets you the first slice of companion dlc.
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So my computer can't run this and I am considering the Xbox version. But I dunno. I really liked the PC version.
There also is a preorder thing going on where you can get an upgraded edition but I don't know that much about what is going on with different editions and preorder bonus stuff. Has anyone heard anything about this?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003UFAZKW/ref=nosim/cheapassgam08-20
(Apparently this is what Tom is talking about)
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Jesus video game industry let me finish New Vegas
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From what I know basically until the 11th of January they are offering the Signature Edition at the same price as the regular edition which includes extra weapons and that DLC Tom was talking about. Then after the 11th the Signature Edition apparently becomes unavailable and you'll have to pay for the DLC (but not the weapons as far as I can tell) on top of the regular edition of the game if you want it.
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Pretty much. I asked for DA:2 for christmas though, so I should be fine.
And the prince guy is voiced by a bloke who played Paul Atreidies in the Dune miniseries. I am personally wondering how the "rivallry" system is going to work, it seems to be an interesting idea and I am looking forward to seeing it.
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Spoilers: Having someone as a "rival" just means you can still have sex with them but it'll be a hatefuck.
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based on the renegade shep/jack cutscene in ME2 i think hatefuck's what bioware's been building to this whole time?
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I always kinda preferred the term grudgefuck. I think it's the assonance.
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Man.
I wish I could what the text looks like on my crappy SD screen
That is the other see thing I have to consider. I mean playing sitting in my chair will be kick ass but if I can't read the damned text then I am totally screwed if I preorder the 360 version.
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Well there ARE going to be symbols that tell you what sort of thing you are saying at the centre of the convo wheel.
I intend to play my Lady!Hawke as chaste, so I am wondering what is going to happen when I inevitably end up with at least one rival that I don't want to fuck.
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Man (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZFx37hTUgM)
How is it that I am more excited about TESV than this.
Here's a screencap of Merrill, who you might (heh) remember as a character in DA:O's skeletally thin Dalish origin (the Bioware line's been that the Dalish part of the first game was so scant because they were saving it for DA2)
(http://img573.imageshack.us/img573/7894/8b74fc80c0c178270736f07.jpg)
That is the elven body build for DA2. She's also the first available love interest for male Hawkes, allegedly.
Different standards of beauty 8-)
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The Dalish/Elves are going to get this game banned/censored in Australia because our reactionary censorship board will see them as being sexualised children engaging in violence.
EDIT: I'm actually getting it from the UK because it's cheaper.
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But if kids didn't kill shit and fuck older beardy dudes, it wouldn't be dark fantasy.
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I mean
(http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/5333/5c51e423d9a7e4eaeb373c5.jpg)
At least elven infants never go hungry.
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Well at least they don't just look like shorter more tattooed humans now.
Also, I wonder how many companions are going to form your "core" group and how many will come and go with the years? And did anyone notice the grey bearded Vetinari lookalike in the video? I wonder if he's the "ruler" or kirkwall.
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Well I think I am going to preorder this today and get the "signature" version. I mean it's gonna suck if they come out with a collections edition closer to the release date but what are you gonna do.
Oh hey you can get some free items if you sign up for the newsletter.
Fancy Belt:
http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/info/pennyarcade/
Click on the pic to the right.
Magical Staff:
http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/info/parthalan/
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Already acquired, and I must admit that I am truly looking forward to this game. Mainly because I don't have a lot of time to play it and that makes it all the sweeter when I am going to.
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I mean
At least elven infants never go hungry.
Elven chiropractic magic must be really advanced.
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Others commented on the... erm rather developed Elven proportions. Apparently its a throwback to an earlier build from what the Dev's have told people.
Also, had a look on the site and the sheer amount of free stuff that is being given away with this game is obscene if you have already ordered the signitaure edition! And even if your buying new you get a mabari and the equivilient of a "facial reconstruction" magic item.
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Holy crap! So much Stuff!
It's all just ones and zeros...but STILL!
I wonder if they are going to give away even more stuff with a mini game thing like they did with that flash game?
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okay, I finally finished the first one!
Which of the additional campaigns are worthwhile? I really want to play witch hunt (as I went with Morrigans plans during the final battle), and the other ones sounds good. Any recommendations?
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Awakening is is still good and Witch Hunt gives some narrative closure. All the others aren't all that necessary or interesting.
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The only DLC worth getting is the Stone Prisoner. Witch Hunt is way, way too short and Awakenings is just... blah. The one where you play as Darkspawn is just confounding, and it's 100% combat, which in DA:O is not promising.
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Yeah. Return to Ostagar is only for people who are REALLY into loot whoring and have a hangup about using mods.
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What about that one with the bard lady?
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It's better than Ostagar but that's not a great accomplishment. Frankly, Leliana's past is silly with or without the DLC and it's not like any great mysteries are cleared up, so I'd feel free to skip it.
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Are they worth playing if, say, I grabbed the Ultimate Edition in the steam sales?
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Are you prepared to lose 200 hrs of your life.
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You may as well get the Ultimate Edition if you think you're likely to play through Awakening. Like KvP I'm not the biggest fan of the expansion, but overall that pack is quite a bit of game for your money, so you could do worse.
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Awakening I found to be a little easy and a bit disjointed but yeah you can do worse. Witch Hunt was just weird the final conversation with Morrigan made me really confussed as it didn't seem to do anything but add a tonne of sequel hooks.
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Spoilers: Having someone as a "rival" just means you can still have sex with them but it'll be a hatefuck.
Actually, I thought they were infering it also works like in Alpha Protocol where you one bonus for good relationship and a different one for bad.
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That as well, except it might not be as strong as Alpha Protocols "kill you on site" sort of hate. Apparently the bonuses for friendship effect Hawke and the person, whilst the hate ones effect everyone else.
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Spoilers: Having someone as a "rival" just means you can still have sex with them but it'll be a hatefuck.
Actually, I thought they were infering it also works like in Alpha Protocol where you one bonus for good relationship and a different one for bad.
No they have explicitly stated that antagonizing your companions does not affect the possibility of romance (sorry, "romance"), nor will it compel them to react negatively to you such that they would think of leaving you. Leave it to Bioware to bring the experience of toxic relationships to gaming, minus all the negative experiences, natch.
Example!:
Elf girl companion: "People should live in peace and not hurt one another, don't you think so Hawke"
Hawke: "The world is careless and people should look out for number one"
Elf girl companion: "Oh I realize now that my previous outlook was naive and stupid take me now o Hero of Kirkwall"
WGA Awards here we come!
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I wasn't arguing that, I was just saying I though they were doing the bonuses too.
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You really do hate bioware don't you.
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If "hate" entails not drawing Garrus fanart, absolutely.
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Jon, to be fair, I thought you hated ME2 for the first several months the game was out because of how venomous your general talk about Bioware and their games are.
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Elf girl companion: "People should live in peace and not hurt one another, don't you think so Hawke"
Hawke: "The world is careless and people should look out for number one"
Elf girl companion: "Oh I realize now that my previous outlook was naive and stupid take me now o Hero of Kirkwall"
i can see how someone might interpret this as hate or at least severe dislike
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Its true, you do pretty much have a very angry demeanour towards them.
That said, I loved Alpha Protocol in every way. Its just that it was let down by overhype and problems with release dates.
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Elf girl companion: "People should live in peace and not hurt one another, don't you think so Hawke"
Hawke: "The world is careless and people should look out for number one"
Elf girl companion: "Oh I realize now that my previous outlook was naive and stupid take me now o Hero of Kirkwall"
i can see how someone might interpret this as hate or at least severe dislike
Honestly I can't see "rivalry romances" turning out any differently than that given that
It's not Paragon/Renegade as in two seperate meters with their own values but Friendship and Rivalry as opposite ends of the same spectrum.
Some of the best romances, in my opinion, spring from conflict.
The rivalry path is the only way you can alter their philosophy-- as the rivalry path is, at its core, based on the fact that your philosophy is different
in addition to being friends, its now an open choice for you to build up a consistent rivalry with someone and to tell them that no, it’s their moral compass that is not correct and that you can actually have a real interaction around that rather than just them getting angry and storming off. They will still do that, but it’s not like a lose condition like it was in Origins
There is a point at the "end" of the Rivalry path which mimics the end of the Frienship path: the companion is loyal and whatever conflict lay between you has been resolved. That's how the path works.
That is the essential gist of the rivalry system as it applies to romances.
Plus I think pulling off a romantically involved couple who have fundamentally different outlooks is beyond the scope of most games and certainly beyond the abilities of David Gaider.
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You guys realise that the romance's are optional, right?
:mrgreen:
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Oh yeah, my male Hawke is going to be as virginial as a snowflake (and not one of those filthy whore snowflakes either).
Oh and give it a rest for petes sake, what did the man do? Kill your dog or something? And they can still maintain a rivallry with you, even a dislike but they can probably respect you now. At least thats how I understood it.
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Josef, no offense but I'd rather you give it a rest. I get the impression that KvP isn't a huge fan of bioware these days too, but that doesn't mean his opinions aren't worth having around. Everyone has a bias and I don't really see why confronting him over his beats just taking it into account. I mean, really, he has a point when he says that there's scant evidence to believe this will be particularly convincing. Videogame romances haven't progressed terribly far since their introduction, after all. So far they work well if you keep it light and aim for the level of fidelity you find in action movies (Sands of Time being a great example,) but so far anything beyond that has treaded some pretty wonky territory. For example, I find it telling that PoP:SoT worked in large part because you don't have any input on it. You're being told the story of two people from the angle of one person. It's never really given a chance to go off the rails, and this rivalry system gives me the impression that in DAII you're going to be able to go right ahead and push the cart off yourself.
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Yeah... I am being a tit, I apoligise KvP.
I would just prefer to know the reasons behind the hatred rather than just stating how bad someones writing ability is when (for the most part) Dragon Ages characters are written by individual writers, not by overall storyline developers. And the truth is I don't really play any game for the "romance" aspect, so I pretty much ignore the majority of that stuff and stay for the overarching plot.
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Nah, don't apologize.
Dude's pretty obnoxious in every Bioware thread.
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Well he's entitled to his opinion, and I am loathe to cause friction over something this daft.
Also: http://bioware.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/quanari_lineup.jpg
Qunari line up, guess which one is the mage!
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Best thing about the Qunari is that Gaider said they were inspired by Islam after they were turned into demonic communists.
Qunari
The people of the Qun are, perhaps, the least-understood group in Thedas. The Qunari Wars were brutal, but so was the Chantry Schism. So was the fall of the Imperium. Some of this misunderstanding is an accident of nature: The race we call “qunari” are formidable. Nature has given them fierce horns and strange eyes, and the ignorant look on them and see monsters.
Some is an accident of language: Few among the Qun’s people speak the common tongue, and fewer speak it well. In a culture that strives for mastery, to have only a passable degree of skill is humiliating indeed, and so they often keep quiet among foreigners, out of shame.
But much of it is a result of the culture itself. The qunari view their whole society as a single creature: A living entity whose health and well-being is the responsibility of all. Each individual is only a tiny part of the whole, a drop of blood in its veins. Important not for itself, but for what it is to the whole creature. Because of this, the qunari most outsiders meet belong to the army, which the Qun regards as if it were the physical body: Arms, legs, eyes and ears, the things a creature needs in order to interact with the world. One cannot get to know a person solely by studying his hand or his foot, and so one cannot truly “meet” the qunari until one has visited their cities. That is where their mind and soul dwell.
In Seheron and Par Vollen, one can truly see the qunari in their entirety. There, the unification of the qunari into a single being is most evident. Workers, whom the Qun calls the mind, produce everything the qunari require. The soul, the priesthood, seeks a greater understanding of the self, the world, and exhorts the body and mind to continually strive for perfection. The body serves as the go-between for the mind, the soul, and the world. Everyone and everything has a place, decided by the Qun, in which they work for the good of the whole. It is a life of certainty, of equality, if not individuality.
–From the writings of the Seer of Qont-arr, 8:41 Blessed.
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I just don't feel like browbeating KvP into self-censorship out of some need to defend David Gaider's honor, that's all. I'm willing to put up with some snark if there's more to a post than some screenshots.
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I thought he said they were Militant Buddhist Borg. And they are partially inspired by the Turks from what I remember (what with the Tevinter being Byzantium afterall).
To be honest they seem like collectivist, turkish, confucian buddhists. It'll be interesting to see how they interact with the rest of the world if we ever get to see their home cities.
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I don't mind people taking issue with what I post. It's not a big deal.
Anyway, this is what Gaider said on the Bioboards
The qunari are sort of like what you'd get if you crossed Islam with the Borg. Hmm. *writes that down*
In a rare bit of self-consciousness the admins more or less immediately backtracked, and anyone who brings the quote up is banned.
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Really it's a problem with fantasy in general as much as it's a problem with Bioware's Thedas - anything that takes after Tolkien's Middle Earth, in which races and cultures within the world are thinly veiled analogs for real-world cultures, has a troubling tendency to make cultures outside of Europe exaggerated in their exoticism. Western Europeans are the protagonists of history.
For reference, this is the Dragon Age wiki article on the Qunari's religion, the Qun:
The qunari follow the philosophy of the Qun (kyoon), a violently evangelical religion based on the writings of the ashkaari Koslun. The Qun defines the role of everyone and everything in the society of the qunari, regardless of whether it is spiritual or mundane. For example, some qunari are raised as soldiers from a very young age. They are expected to be strong, disciplined, and stoic, adhering without fail to the tenets of honor and duty as defined in the Qun. Fanatical in this devotion, the qunari are prepared to wage war throughout their entire lives as part of their attempts to "enlighten" all other races in regards to their philosophy.
The qunari live after the rules in the Qun unquestioningly, and see it as their duty to convert the unbelieving, giving them their rightful place in the Qun. Even qunari attempts at trade with other races and nations are done primarily to size up potential opponents, rather than to amass resources or wealth.
The qunari do not believe in gods and find the concept of invisible all-knowing beings who are interested in judging you after you die laughable. They tolerate deism in the converted populations in Rivain and Seheron, however, as they view their inhabitants as just beginning the path to enlightened self-knowledge, and that they will discard that sort of superstition eventually.
Qunari who have abandoned the Qun are called Tal'Vashoth and live away from the qunari homelands, often working as mercenaries, some of whom the Warden will meet in places. Qunari value their weapons highly and consider them part of their worthiness. A qunari soldier must never be separated from his sword; such individuals will likely be shamed and/or executed upon returning to the homeland.
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Ahh, well I always saw them as more Buddhist or Taoist myself. But I can understand why its removed (though not why its bannable) I have said more than a few stupid STUPID things I've wanted to delete immediatly after posting.
Its to appeal to the larger market I think. Plus I don't really have any reason to complain about it, Japense RPG's have Tokyo as the centre of the Universe and Doctor Who has Cardiff as the centre of a dimensional rift. Its more just Creator provincialism than anything else.
Not that I wouldn't mind a Jade Empire 2 of couse, or indeed something based around The Years of Rice and Salt.
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I don't mind people taking issue with what I post. It's not a big deal.
I just figured it was the least interesting way this thread could be derailed, mostly.
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Bioware as company has always prided itself on making games that are innovative as well as artistically, critically and commercially successful. It's a good thing that there are fans out there who will actually call bullshit on a lot of what Bioware does provided they're not being contrarian for the sake of it but just informed and concerned. John usually gives me something to think about even if he sounds like a dick at times.
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i'm torn on bioware's approach to relationships between characters and the writing used to convey it because i can understand the political motivations for calling them out but at the same time the writing tends to be compelling anyways
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on the other hand
The qunari are sort of like what you'd get if you crossed Islam with the Borg. Hmm. *writes that down*
makes the new qunari redesigns the worst redesigns ever. i was worried enough when i knew they were Muslim Hulks
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Demon muslim robots from spaaaaace.
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Beyond the political ramifications, I'd be all over a flash game about the Muslim Borg.
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The qunari are sort of like what you'd get if you crossed Islam with the Borg. Hmm. *writes that down*
I don't think many writers deliberately sit down and go "OK, this race is going to be stand-in for race/cultural group X". What I do find worrying and frustrating is that how we use our limited understanding of other cultures as a shorthand to describe what we're trying to achieve artistically. We're not doing anything any favours by reducing cultures and serious historically events into tiny descriptive statements. Both the work, or whatever, and the culture/historic event are cheapened. Gaiders statement is as silly as the "Dalish are the jews in exile" and the "Alienage = Auschwitz" ideas that we're floated around when DA:O came out.
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Are you ready for virtual BJs? (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/02/07/dragon-age-ii-is-mature/)
Also this game is out in about a month and 4 days.
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Money on the PC always on the receiving end, not the giving end. That would be pretty gay.
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Also this game is out in about a month and 4 days.
In the UK yeah (and it's 3 days now), it's a month off in the US. Bastards.
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Wait, 3 days. That means I can play it in fortnight, Hooray for PAL!
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So they released some screenies of the all-important romances, and uh
(http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3342/bd7132e1fb4b6ff519d0621.jpg)
Damn.
There's also this one
(http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/1812/044e25a600e34b92dabd65c.jpg)
Hawke's sex partners seem awfully distressed.
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I mean shit how do you wield a sword with those things attached to you.
Anyway, the team has released some short fiction!
Isabela
The woman that walks into the Hanged Man is a sight, bedraggled and scruffy, like a rat that’s been soaking in the bilge for a week. Her ripped, weather-beaten smock is stained with soot from Lowtown’s chimneys and her boots, while of fine leather, are well-worn and crudely patched in a number of places. Her bearing, however, is proud, even arrogant, and she strides into the tavern like she owns the place.
“They told me I could get a drink here,” she says, coming toward the bar with a singular purpose. She slaps a half-dozen silver coins onto my counter. “What’ll this get me?”
“It’ll get you drunk enough,” I say.
“Then keep the liquor coming till the coin runs out. And make it strong.”
I wipe a chipped clay tumbler with my apron and fill it with the tavern’s most potent brew. She snatches it from my hand before I’m done pouring, and downs the drink in one gulp.
“You really needed that, didn’t you?” I pour her another drink.
“You have no idea.” She sighs and rubs her temples. “They call me Isabela, by the way. You might as well learn the name. I think I’m going to be here a while.”
It doesn’t take long for a foul-smelling longshoreman to show up. Isabela stiffens as she feels a hand, low on her back. The longshoreman opens his mouth to say something, but never gets the chance. Isabela grabs the man by the wrist, twisting his arm behind him. His cry is one of shock rather than pain, but that quickly changes as Isabela rams her elbow into the back of the neck, slamming his face into the wooden bar-top.
“Touch me again, and I’ll break more than just these,” she hisses in his ear. And then she snaps the fingers of the offending hand. I hear a crunch, several sickening pops, and a howl of pain. The longshoreman slinks away, cradling his hand and spitting curses.
“What?” she says, holding the empty tumbler out for a refill and daring me to make a comment, any comment. I gesture towards her striking outfit—nothing but a chemise worn without the benefit of a jacket or cloak, covering only the barest minimum required for decency. Put on something like that, and you’re going to get attention whether you want it or not.
“What? This?” She picks at the laces on her bodice, then lets out a short, bitter laugh. “Would’ve dressed up for you, but I left all my polite clothes at the bottom of the ocean.”
As I ponder the meaning of that statement, one of a group of Lowtown ruffians sidles up to the bar. He smirks, greasy lips sliding over yellow teeth in an expression that’s more grimace than smile. “I’m Lucky,” he says.
“Is that a name, or a description?” she asks, not even looking at him.
“It’s both. And If you’re new in Kirkwall, you’ll want to talk to me. My boys and I know everything going on in this town.”
“You know,” says Isabela, coldly. “I once knew a dog named Lucky. Obnoxious little thing, and too stupid to know when he was two yaps away from a kick in the side.”
Lucky turns beet red, and glances at his mates for moral support. Lucky’s boys jeer and laugh, offering no support whatsoever, and Lucky beats a hasty retreat. Isabela plays with the clay tumbler, turning it around this way and that, examining its numerous imperfections. Her eyes narrow.
“Wait,” she says suddenly. “If you know everything going on in Kirkwall, maybe we should talk.”
Lucky nods and grins. Isabela turns to him and I catch a mischievous glint in her eye.
“You see,” she says, smiling for the first time. “I lost something in a shipwreck, and I’d like for it to be found.”
Learn more about Isabela when you play Dragon Age 2.
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Anders
The light here isn't right. It's too yellow. Too harsh. And it all comes from above. For a moment, I'm not sure why that seems wrong. The sun… that's always been there, right? What am I remembering?
The word comes back to me. The Fade. I am a mage. I've spent time in the place I remember. It is a land of mist, of dreams. And I'm right; the light there is different, emanating from the ground, the walls, not a single pinpoint source. But I've never been more than a visitor there. Why does it suddenly feel like home?
What else can't I remember?
I sit up, and the light brightens, darkens, steadies. The throb in my head returns and without thinking, I draw on a breath of mana to drive it away. The pain lifts as the magic settles over it, soothing and cooling. I try to think. Let's start with something simple. My name. What is my name?
I am Anders.
I am Justice.
This never used to be so hard.
Suddenly it comes back to me. Justice's voice, my voice, speaking through the rotting face of the body he once claimed. "It is time. You have shown me an injustice greater than any I have faced. Do you have the courage to accept my aid?"
I knew what he offered.
To stay in the mortal realm, he needs a host, a body to inhabit for a lifetime, not a corpse which will rot out from beneath him. If I gave him that, he would give me all he had, all he was. Together, we could remake Thedas into a world where justice rules, not fear.
A world with no Circle. No templars. A world where every mage can learn to use their gifts and still return home at night. Where no mother ever need hide her child… or lose him to the fear of his neighbors. Where magic is recognized as a gift of the Maker, not the curse it has become.
It's almost too much to imagine. The Circle, the templars, they've shaped my life. I was no more than twelve when they came for me. My mother wept when they fixed the chains to my wrists, but my father was glad to see me gone. He had been afraid, ever since the fire in the barn. Not just afraid of what I could do, but afraid of me, afraid my magic was punishment for whatever petty sins he imagined the Maker sat in judgment upon.
I always knew I wouldn't submit. I could never be what they wanted from me -- compliant, obedient, guilty. But before Justice, I was alone. I never thought beyond my own escape: Where would I hide? How long before they found me?
Now, even that thought repulses me. Why should so many others live with what I will not? Why must the Circle of Magi stand? Just because it always has, just because those who read Andraste's words twisted them to mean that mages must be prisoners? Why has there never been a revolution?
"He's coming to." A voice, getting closer. Someone I know. A Grey Warden.
"What in the Maker's name happened to him?" There are two of them. This one I don't know.
"He just went crazy. His eyes were glowing… His bloody skin cracked open and it was like he was on fire inside. Just kept raving… something about injustice, a revolution. Thought I was going to have to put the blighter down like a mad dog, then he just collapsed."
"Damned mages."
I struggle to stand, to open my eyes and face them like a man, not the chewed-up pile of hurlock spew I feel like. I can see them now. It's Rolan; of course it is. The price I had to pay for the Grey Wardens' generosity in recruiting me out from under the templars' noses. He was one of them, before his Chantry was destroyed by the darkspawn and he felt the calling to join the Wardens. No one ever said a deal had been struck, but as soon as the templars stopped their protests, Rolan turned up in the Wardens, and we've fielded every assignment together since. It's all too clear the templars sent him to keep watch.
And whatever possessed me to make my deal with Justice anywhere he might witness?
As he appears, I regret that choice of words, because something stirs inside me, and I wonder if it's harder for Justice to exert his will in a body that a living consciousness still inhabits. But it's a futile question, because his thoughts are mine and he is me, and I'm no longer sure what I was even asking.
Rolan is in front of me now, and the white griffin on his chest plate blurs in my sight with the steel-grey sword-of-flames on his companion's armor, and I know with white-hot certainty that Rolan has betrayed me.
"The Wardens agreed we can't harbor an abomination," he is saying, nasal voice vibrating with smug satisfaction, and I don't need to hear more. He's brought the templars down on me, on us, and this is just what we've been waiting for.
I don't see myself when I change, only the reflection in their eyes and the sound of their screams. My arm lashes out and silverite doesn't so much break as explode in a shower of molten metal. The sword melts, running down the templar's chest, and I follow up with a wave of flames which scorch the flesh from his face, leaving only bone so hot it smolders. The trees are burning… the tent… everything around us.
Rolan is still standing, and I smell the lyrium he drank, which guarded him from the blast. But he's afraid. I see his shield jerk and know he barely resisted the urge to flee, and I have a sudden thought, "What am I?" for I've seen him face both broodmothers and abominations without fear.
And then his sword is level with my chest, and I let it come, because it is only steel and cannot hurt me, for I am not of mortal men. And when it sinks hilt-deep in my flesh with no reaction, that's when he gives up. He turns and runs, and from behind, I tear his head off at the neck, no magic, just me, whatever that is now. His blood splashes into my open mouth and it tastes like honeyed wine and the warmth spreads through me.
He hated me, and he is dead. He feared me, and he is dead. He hunted me, and he is dead.
They will all die. Every templar, every holy sister who stands in the way of our freedom will die in agony and their deaths will be our fuel. We will have justice. We will have vengeance.
And suddenly I'm alone, standing in a burning forest, with the bodies of templars and wardens at my feet. So many, and I didn't even know they were there. Didn't even know I had killed them, but the evidence is all around me. Not the aftermath of a battle as I've known it, but a bloody abattoir of rent limbs and torn and eaten flesh.
This is not justice. This is not the spirit who was my friend, my self. What has he become? What have I become? We must get out of here. There is no place for me in the Grey Wardens now.
Is there a place for me anywhere?
Learn more about Anders when you play Dragon Age 2.
Merrill
“Watch your step, da’len.”
The Keeper’s warning comes too late -- as usual -- and I trip over the rock, bruising my knees and losing the skin on my palms to the jagged mountain rock. Mythal’enast! Someday, I’ll learn to watch where I’m going. I struggle to my feet, hands covered in blood, and look around.
We’re here.
The cave mouth is unbearably spooky, even for Sundermount, which you’d think was trying for some sort of spookiness medal. Most Terrifying Mountain in Thedas, maybe. Mist swirls out of the blackness as if it’s breathing, and the hillside around it is barren. A gaping maw, devouring all the life within its reach…
Not a good mindset, Merrill. Think positive! At least the weather’s fair.
“You feel it too, then.” The Keeper’s voice snaps me back to reality. She’s looking at me expectantly. .. which means I’ve forgotten something. I try to smooth my tunic and succeed in smearing blood down the front. Wonderful. And I still don’t know what it is she’s waiting for—oh! Answer. Right.
“Yes, Keeper. The voice is much louder here.” The whisper tugs at the edge of my thoughts, and I can make it out if I concentrate. In the camp, I could only hear it in my dreams, and the words were lost upon waking. Only a memory of terrible loneliness remained. Even the Keeper woke sobbing the second night.
Come to me.
I shiver. This is definitely the source.
“Follow me, da’len. And keep your wits about you.” The Keeper vanishes into the hungry mouth of the cave. I take a deep breath and go inside.
The dark is a shock after the sun-drenched mountainside. Like jumping into a pool of icy water on a hot day. My eyes adjust to the dimness, we pass through a narrow passageway into a grand chamber and I see… ruins. Light shines through cracks in the ceiling, broken by the shifting of time and tree roots. Not a cave after all then? A temple or a tomb or… I don’t know what this is. Strange.
“It doesn’t look elvish, does it, Keeper? Tevinter, maybe?” I look to the Keeper, who is peering silently at some sort of archway with a disapproving frown that I know all too well. Poor archway. It didn’t do anything.
“If this place was part of the war, then it doesn’t matter who built it. It is dangerous.” The Keeper turns from the archway, apparently dismissing it. “If it isn’t from the war, it is unknown, and probably still dangerous.” I’m certain there’s a flaw in her reasoning somewhere, but it seems like the middle of the creepy tomb-cavern is a bad place to argue the point. She descends a short stairway into the temple below.
I trail after her, giving the archway a reassuring pat as I pass.
Come to me.
The voice comes from the far end of the temple, from an ugly statue of a big squatting… thing with too many arms and legs. Well, that’s not promising at all.
“Who calls us?” The Keeper demands, drawing herself up. She looks the way I imagine the elves of Arlathan did, regal and wise, and the timbre of her voice says, I don’t care if you are a spirit, I will thrash you if you give me a reason. She scolded a wild sylvan with that voice once, and it stumbled off looking ashamed of itself. Well, as ashamed as a tree can look, anyway.
Help me.
Oh, that was not the right answer at all.
Keeper Marethari seems to grow taller, becoming a towering pillar of angry Dalishness. “Name yourself! Or be left to your silence.”
I am One Who is Trapped. Help me.
“Your name!” I have never seen the Keeper this angry. Not even when Tamlen disappeared.
Three seems to be the magic number. Audacity. The voice is like a winter wind, bitter and ragged.
“A demon.” The Keeper spits the word as if it tastes foul. She nods at me, “Bound to the statue. It will not threaten the camp.” She turns to leave, satisfied.
Wait! I have been trapped here for time beyond counting. I bore witness to the fall of your kingdom. Help me, Keeper of the Dalish, and I will give you knowledge of all I have seen. For a moment, I see visions of the world as it once was. An empire that spanned all Thedas, glittering cities of the elvhen…. All this could be yours.
“Come, da’len.” The Keeper beckons. The vision fades.
I turn and follow her out into the light.
Learn more about Merrill when you play Dragon Age 2.
Fenris
The hunters were after him again.
Truth be told, he’d known for several days. He’d seen it in the eyes of the innkeeper, the way the fat man guiltily glanced away and refused to meet his gaze. He’d seen it in the pitying look of the **** that stood on the corner, and the way she covered it up with a smile. The patrons in that squalid tavern where he went to buy his meals grew quiet when he entered now, and it was not the uncomfortable silence of human townsfolk being confronted with a strange elf covered in strange skin markings and carrying a large sword—rather it was the silence of men who knew trouble had just walked through the door and were now doing their best to pretend it didn’t exist. Fenris knew the difference very well.
He’d been lazy. Despite the fact that he’d known, still part of him refused to admit that it was so. He’d hoped against hope that he was wrong, that the signs were simply a fugitive’s paranoia. His stay in the last three towns had been longer and longer, his efforts to cover up his distinctive markings almost nonexistent. He told himself that this was a challenge. Let them come. Let them try and take him back, if they dared. Deep down, however, he wondered if he hadn’t simply grown weary of the chase.
Now was the time. He’d already cleaned his few meager possessions out of his room at the inn and jumped out the window. It led to a dark alley in the back, with enough ledges below that a quick descent was easily accomplished. That was why Fenris had chosen the room after an inspection that had the innkeeper staring at him in worry. He almost had to wonder how long it would take the fat man before curiosity, or a lack of payment, would lead him to check and find Fenris gone. A week, perhaps less if the innkeeper was the one who’d sold him out.
There was nothing in the alley save for a few lone rats and an elven vagrant asleep against a garbage heap. Fenris paused and stared at the man in disgust. He’d thought to blend in more once he’d escaped the Imperium. In a land where elves were free, certainly one more elf would go unnoticed? He’d been a fool, of course. How was he to know that so many of his people would squander their freedom living like frightened cattle? If his only choices were to either dress as meekly as the local humans expected their elves to be, run off to find the wandering clans that grubbed in the dirt for whatever scraps the human kingdoms threw them, or to fight… then his choice was clear.
The vagrant stirred awake as Fenris drew the greatsword from his back. The elf squealed in sudden terror but Fenris ignored him. There were others coming now, cloaked in the alley’s shadows—at least two on either side and… one above? He listened, and heard the faintest scraping on the clay tiles up above. Yes, no doubt a crossbowman. They thought they had him pinned.
Fenris launched himself towards the end of the alley that led away from the main street. Here it led into a maze of twisty courtyards, sewage and lines of hung laundry… but it would be darker there, easier for him to run without stirring the town guard. Why the hunters never tried bribing the guard to help their hunt he couldn’t say. Regardless, he’d run amiss of the guard in another town and they’d impeded his efforts to escape as much as they impeded the hunters. It wasn’t worth the risk.
The vagrant shouted in fear and drunkenly scrambled to his feet, but Fenris was already past him. Two long figures approached, barely visible but moving fast now as they realized their quarry was aware of the chase. Fenris caught a glimpse of maroon. Tevinter soldiers, then. Good, that would make this easier. Not that he wouldn’t have killed mercenaries just as easily, but it was less pleasant than slaughtering dogs like these.
A wide arc of his blade knocked the first hunter aside as he parried. The second rushed forward, hoping to take advantage of an opening—only to meet Fenris’s fist. The markings on his skin flashed brightly, the lyrium within them sending magic crawling through his flesh, and his fist phased through the man’s helmet and directly into his head. He lurched to a halt, stunned with terror.
So they weren’t warned. Fools.
The lyrium markings flashed again as Fenris partially solidified his fist. The hunter jolted back, blood gushing forth from his mouth and his ears. By now the first hunter was already recovered and swinging his blade. Fenris expertly hauled the second around by his head, putting him into the path of the swing. The sword chopped deeply into the man’s shoulder, and with a kick he sent both of them flying together into the brick wall. His fist was covered in dark red gore.
He would have stayed to finish them off, but the other hunters were already figuring things out. A crossbow bolt flew by Fenris’s head, barely nicking one of his ears, and he could hear the booted feet of more soldiers rushing his way. He ran into the alleyway, leaping over the hunter who struggled to push off his dead comrade, and sped into the maze. Dark doorways flew by as he raced. He cut down clotheslines and tossed over barrels to present obstacles behind him. They were definitely giving chase—he could hear them swearing in Tevinter, and the crossbowman above scrambling to get into position.
The first pair of open shutters he saw and Fenris dived through. He landed in a kitchen filled with the smell of baking bread, and a human woman screamed as he rolled to his feet. No doubt the sight of an elf in skintight armor, carrying a blade almost as large as himself, wasn’t a welcome sight. He got to his feet and noticed the surprisingly comely woman, dressed in a nightgown that revealed more of her cleavage than she no doubt expected, pressing against the wall.
He grinned at her, and she screamed again. So he grabbed a freshly-baked loaf off the counter and raced for the front door of the hovel. Already a soldier was climbing through the window, causing the woman to scream once more and faint dead away. The others would be coming around to the front, so he had to get out before…
…he stopped cold. He knew the man who stood at the doorway: maroon cloak and jet-black hair barely covering those soulless eyes. Not to mention a scar on his neck, one that Fenris had put there. Damned healing potions and their foul magic. Why couldn’t anyone stay dead?
“Avanna, Fenris. Good to see you again.” The hunter’s voice was a cold purr as he raised his crossbow and pointed the bolt at Fenris’s chest. The one on the roof, then. Clever.
“Considering what happened last time, I’m surprised you decided to try again.”
“It’s not just about the coin any longer, slave.”
Oh, how Fenris loved it when they said that. “Not afraid you’ll lose your head for good?”
“Not when we have the drop on you. You’ve become careless. Time to give yourself up.” The other hunter had made it through the window , and he could hear others shouting in the street. He supposed that he really had only two choices: give up and hope for a chance to escape later… or take his chances.
It wasn’t really a choice. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his blade and smiled at the hunter, slow and deadly. “Vishante kaffar,” he hissed. And he attacked.
Learn more about Fenris when you play Dragon Age 2.
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revealed infos:
- you will be in the Deep Roads by the end of Act 1
- boss fights will use timing/patterns/geometry (ex. you can move out of the way of a thrown rock)
- Bioware wasn't even sure it was possible to finish Nightmare until one of their people finished it last week
- Cone of Cold and Fireball are not as 'win' as in the last game
- Shield Bash talent looks more like you are really bashing. In the first game, your character would trot up to the opponent and halfheartedly hit them. Now you sprint at them like you are gonna football-tackle them with your shoulder behind the board and slam into them
- Shield Assault: you spin around and hit people in an arc
- Rivalry: If Varric is a rival, he gets more accurate (as a rival, he wants to prove he is better - more accurate); if he is more of a friend, he gives a party - based bonus
- Most every party character has a unique skill tree. So if you see one that doesn't, there is probably some story reason
- two handed warrior: you can get a power that allows you to run around the room and hit everyone. You can also either hit people in a wider arc or make it easier to kill weaker enemies almost instantly
- sword & board: you can choose to make shield bash either cause more knockback/critical damage or do more stunning
- archer has been improved to where it's almost overpowered. Bioware guy joked that if the archer in DA1 was broken in a bad way, he might be broken in a good way in DA2
- almost all the archer's abilities cause knockback, and it may be unfair for the enemies if they can hardly ever approach you
- hail of arrows can be upgraded to storm of arrows, which does additional bleeding damage
- there is an archer ability that enables you to hit everything between you and your target. So a row of enemies in front of you means you hit every one. You can also get it so that it has an easier chance to kill weaker enemies
- if a character is close to the archer, instead of having the archer stand and shoot like an idiot, they can pull out a dagger, stab in the kidneys and face
- Dialog symbols: an olive branch is the more diplomatic option, the red fist is an aggressive option, a bag of money is the symbol for asking for more money
- sometimes you may have a character in your party do something for you. For example, there was a time when the guy had Varric in his party and you were double crossed. You could have Varric kill for you
- It's possible for some of your party members to die in the story, and you lose them
- game engine is 90% of the old one, but should perform better
Video of PS3 version (http://gotgame.com/2011/02/12/dragon-age-ii/).
(also the Bioboards are in an uproar over the non-romanceable nature of Varric the dwarf and it is fantastic).
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Anders is the gay/bi romance option, I take it. Sounds much more interesting than Zevran this time round.
(http://www.gamersnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/anders-da2-530px.jpg)
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I'm not sure if it's clear who's the bi option for male characters but previews (and DA:O) seem to peg Isabella as the bi lady option.
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Romance stills usually have straight couples, so I assumed Fenris was straight.
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I'm not sure if it's clear who's the bi option for male characters but previews (and DA:O) seem to peg Isabella as the bi lady option.
She is, and the only confirmed romance at this point. Given the Garrus/Tali thing from ME2 Anders and Merrill are likely romance options but as to what preference they are is all up in the air.
Personally I want Varric as the gay love interest.
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http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2011-02-15-felicia15_ST_N.htm (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2011-02-15-felicia15_ST_N.htm)
(http://i516.photobucket.com/albums/u330/Dreamcastguy/fel2.jpg)
I am wondering if she has just given up on being a traditional TV and movie actress and is just going to try to cash in on webisodes for the rest of her career?
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Live action Joss Whedon roleplay!
Personally I want Varric as the gay love interest.
Ha! Not happening. Two things that creep out Dave Gaider: Dwarves, and gays. His reasons are marginally better than the ME2 lead's ("gays aren't PG-13") but they still seem to point toward gay romance not being worth development time. Not because gays are gross! No, they just don't fit with the Dragon Age setting.
It's not free, as I said-- and there really seemed to be no point because Morrigan was not interested in women and Alistair was not attracted to men. That's how we thought of them, and the idea of having bisexual characters was something we were going to try out... it wasn't a question of "why wouldn't we?" but "why would we?" Because we had such a tradition of doing it prior? We had two characters we concepted as bisexual and accepted the extra costs with.
If we started out and said "the goal is to make all romances accessible to all players" and we were willing to accept the costs there as well, we could arrange the romances to make the costs as low as necessary and keep the impact on players who weren't seeking gay content minimal. That's not always going to be the goal, however, but it's a perfectly acceptable one.
We didn't (and won't) do strictly gay romances because a romance is very expensive content-- both from a writing, cinematic and testing perspective. It's one thing to add the extra costs to piggy-back on top of an existing romance plotline (and by this I don't necessarily mean "add gay option to straight romance"... it could just as easily be the reverse) and quite something else to have a romance created from whole cloth.
All content has a cost. Sometimes people forget that we as developers create content -- not romance options. It's not solely about whether you have the choice and how fair that is, but whether or not we can afford to make it and whether it fits into the rest of the project we're making.
I'll point out, first off, that the New Vegas characters had very little romance to speak of, as well as no cinematics involved with said romance. Thus their "romance" is very cheap. We'd have nothing against having a strictly gay or lesbian character in our games... so long as you couldn't romance them. Our romances make for very costly content, after all, by our own choice. That's how we want to do them, and thus it affects just how much we can dole out. It's not candy.
As it is, let's pull this back to the topic at hand and keep things civil, shall we? Or we shall have yet another thread closed down, not by homophobia but by militant campaigners who evidently can't see the forest for the trees. Which, again, is too bad.
He also came out pretty early against the legion of Varric shippers.
I apologize for not pandering sufficiently to your jaded sensitivities by offering up exotic, titillating non-human porn. Clearly any good roleplayer understands that having horns or pointed ears makes the romance extra special. My mistake.
People who need a romantic interest to be non-human in order to have their boat sufficiently floated disturb me on the same level as furries. Some of you might want to have that looked at.
(Gaider has a toxic co-dependent relationship with the shippers on the forums)
Naturally, the announcement of a Varric-less list of love interests was a dark, dark day on the Bioboards.
... Wow, BioWare. Just wow.
I'm so bloody impressed, I just may pass out.
F**k. *sigh* Oh well, here's hoping for DA3.
dammit. Dammit.
What. What? What?!? WHAT?!?!
=[
=[
....
=[
Guys. I seriously cried.
I need hug.
[pouty.png]...[sad.png]...[crying.png]... I thought that I could be all cool and calm about this situation. But after I saw Aimo's picture, my heart broke.......don't let them see you cry ol' girl...don't let them see you cry... [crying.png]
That just ripped the heart from my chest and threw it to the ground with bittersweet tears of unfulfilled love. Seriously. It was a punch.
Oh, well. I can't imagine that he won't be awesome anyway, but.. Darn.
*SOBS*
this is even worse than no romanceable sten.
...very sadpanda.
Whatever. I tire of this nonsense. I was hoping that they'd give me the one romance I was really interested in, but noooo. Calla never gets what she wants because she's a bloody weirdo who ~isn't into the mainstream.~
An abomination over a dwarf. Really? REALLY?
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Damn, ah well. Personally I just thought it'd be a laugh. I'm not going to have emo attacks over this.
Oh, the official Romances are out now:
Chris Priestly wrote...
Hello Dragon Age 2 fans.
Happy Valentine’s Day to one and all. We know many of you have romance on your minds today, so we thought we would confirm for you the potential romance characters in Dragon Age 2.
You can choose to romance:
Isabela
Fenris
Merrill
Anders
Keep in mind that all Dragon Age 2 romances are optional, so you can choose to follow these subplots or not as you prefer. All four NPCs also have other non-romance subplots that you can again choose to follow if you want to learn more about these characters. To learn more about the romances, you will need to play Dragon Age 2.
So, if you are romantically inclined during your Dragon Age 2 playthroughs, you now know who you can pursue. Pitch your woo accordingly.
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Am I the only one that thinks the focus people seem to have on the romance parts of the game is completely absurd?
no you aren't
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Am I the only one that thinks that Bioware's romancing trope is a bit absurd?
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by no means
by
no
means
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Having never met Bioware fan-people irl, I'm hard pressed to believe that anyone truly thinks otherwise.
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*shrug* a lot of people seem to really enjoy it, but its not for me. That goes for both gay sex and obsessing about romances in video games.
I am certainly looking forward to seeing what choices and enemies I'll make.
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I dunno, I'm kinda interested in the whole rivalry-romance stick in DA2, beyond that, well it's basically another sidequest.
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I like the romance side quest things in Bioware games, but I don't freak out about them like other people seem to.
Though I did go through the first Mass Effect 4 times to see what the different interactions were like, but that also has to do with being paragon and renegade.
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I just never got into them all that much. The first character I play as tends to be as chaste as Saint Francis.
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Now that there's more detail about this I am starting to get a bit more interested. I agree that the rival idea is pretty interesting, not sure I've seen a mechanic like it before. I mean, I know it's just a modification of the loyalty system in the previous game, but it's an interesting modification.
They should add Felicia Day's Tallis character into the game as a DLC bisexual romanceable option so all the Guild dorks can pretend they're banging her.
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Some guy got the demo early (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRQzl5u5oeQ). Varric's VA is pretty good, don't quite like LadyHawke's british accent. Othewise, looks a whole lot like Jade Empire, minus enemies reacting to being hit.
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Also somebody pointed out that your sister's boobs apparently shrink between "legend" and "what really happened", and darkspawn explode instead of falling over dead. Might explain why Ladyhawke's got crazy basketball tits in that early screenshot.
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I just never got into them all that much. The first character I play as tends to be as chaste as Saint Francis.
Amusingly, I didn't even know that there were romances or that strictly speaking, my character was on the romance path with Jaheira the first time I played through BGII. That's because her romance was easily broken/sidetracked at release and because the first portion of it pretty much consists of not being an enormous ass about the end of her previous relationship. The game called it lurve, I called it etiquette 101.
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Yeah, I found it strange that Jaheira's partner died and about two seconds later she's macking on me.
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I think it may be a cunning way of teaching "how to be nice to people" through videogames.
I liked the look of the Demo, still planning to be a male hawke on the first run through but at least there isn't quite the disparity between Voice actor quality that you see in Mass Effect.
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Some guy got the demo early (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRQzl5u5oeQ). Varric's VA is pretty good, don't quite like LadyHawke's british accent. Othewise, looks a whole lot like Jade Empire, minus enemies reacting to being hit.
Eh, so far I'm happy but I won't commit tell I see some more environs and console controls.
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In reference to the talking ^^ up there earlier, about the romance goings on from Bioware, I only have one thing to say: My name is John, and I am addicted to that little XBox logo popping up and telling me I have accomplished something. I have no excuse beyond this.
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When I replay games I fell a tinge of disappointment every time I finish something important and no achievement pops up.
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My name is John, and I am addicted to that little XBox logo popping up and telling me I have accomplished something.
That's kind of the main problem
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Well, yeah, but I'm no longer in denial about it...
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These skill trees please me. (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6090138)
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Hey I guess if a million people get the demo that comes out the 22nd you get some free times in game.
Like a book that spits out gold when you read it and another book that give you EXP when you read it or something like that.
http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/demo
And you get another sword for finishing the demo to use in the main game.
...at this point my level one character will be so overladen with bonus/preorder/special items that they will be barely able to move. I think his backstory will be that he stole all the stuff off the battlefield after the big battle from Dragon Age 1 finished.
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Gotta practice MY STABBIN (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6DcF2y_fhQ).
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...at this point my level one character will be so overladen with bonus/preorder/special items that they will be barely able to move. I think his backstory will be that he stole all the stuff off the battlefield after the big battle from Dragon Age 1 finished.
The Templars in Lothering must have been more pimped out than my Grey Warden... O_o
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Microsoft is pretty shitty, if you don't have a Gold account you have to wait an extra week for the demo and my computer is still broken.
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Why I am going to get it on PC, and play it there then download it onto XBOX.
And yeah it is shitty.
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The demo will be locked on Normal difficulty. Inexplicable? Hardly.
We chose to set the game at the default, or normal, difficulty. This prevents people from accidentally setting the difficulty too easy or too hard. We do not want to give people the wrong impression about combat by having them accidentally setting it to nightmare and then choosing not to buy as the demo was too hard to play.
We trust that our fans are smart enough to know that if the demo seems good but a tad easy, they can always choose to increase the difficulty in the real game.
I can't figure out how that's worth the effort to implement. I think it might be a joke-y callback to the friendly fire storm-in-a-teacup.
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who sets the difficulty to nightmare by accident without knowing what they're doing?
EDIT: Oh, wait, I once set Oblivion's difficulty slider to maximum and forgot about it, and went on to complain that the leveling system broke that game by making it too hard. So I guess this can happen,
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downloaded the demo for this before I left for work today even though I'm pretty sure I don't care.
I'll try to check it out when I get home, but I might just say fuck it because I just bought Two Worlds 2 and it's blowing my mind.
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The demo will be locked on Normal difficulty. Inexplicable? Hardly.
dead space 2's demo was locked there too
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I find that to be the silliest thing to be puzzled by or complain about.
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It's a pretty standard balancing measure. I just don't know why they keep on with this "we must protect gamers from themselves" thing. Maybe they have data that shows accidental difficulty adjustment is a common issue?
Anybody played the demo yet? I just had it downloaded but I can't play it cuz of SWANS YEAHHHH
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Having to play it on the PC because I have no gold account, but its quite a lot of fun. The combat is a lot more fun and a lot more frantic. Even at this sort of level I am feeling a little challenged as opposed to the grindfest of origins. The movements are fast, the abilities cheap and everything is cool.
Also, think I am going to go for Mage Hawke to keep Carver around.
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It's a pretty standard balancing measure.
Of course it is, but it's also a demo. Their reasoning aside, demos rarely give you more than a slight taste of the experience anyways and it is plenty to decide if you want to purchase the game with or without a difficulty slider.
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Welp they didn't reach the million download mark.
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Welp they didn't reach the million download mark.
You realise that it's open till the 1st, right?
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oh my god all the character designs are so instantly hateable!? what the hell have they done to flemeth oh my god
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oh my god all the character designs are so instantly hateable!? what the hell have they done to flemeth oh my god
Animes.
The combat is a lot more fun and a lot more frantic. Even at this sort of level I am feeling a little challenged as opposed to the grindfest of origins. The movements are fast, the abilities cheap and everything is cool.
See I didn't get this feeling. Initial engagement, skill usage and kills are generally more satisfying and "visceral", but there's still that mushy middle where you're just clearly DPSing to whittle down an opponent's health. This is particularly interminable with ogres and other minibosses and it's just that endless *chunk chunk chunk* as you hack away. It may be that I'm playing on PC, where attacking is automated, but.
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See I didn't get this feeling. Initial engagement, skill usage and kills are generally more satisfying and "visceral", but there's still that mushy middle where you're just clearly DPSing to whittle down an opponent's health. This is particularly interminable with ogres and other minibosses and it's just that endless *chunk chunk chunk* as you hack away. It may be that I'm playing on PC, where attacking is automated, but.
I imagine that will go away in higher levels as you get more abilities and stamina/mana and can just smack things around better. The auto hack thing is a little tedious though.
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Okay I am just going to ask this now, what the hell is everyone's problem with the new character models? Why are they "hateable", because I just cannot understand why people dislike them so much. If anything I prefer them, they look a little more stylised and a bit more expressive, and I litterally cannot see what everyone seems to be talking about when they complain about them.
I wouldn't mind hearing your reasons, I just don't like it when people say they "hate" something and provide no qualifiers for it.
^ Also agreed, but when you have a full team and you are moving through each of them (as I inevitably had to do with the Isabella Chantry fight) I found that I was using an absolute tonne of the abilities and by the time I had used one on one person another useful one had opened up on someone else.
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Welp they didn't reach the million download mark.
You realise that it's open till the 1st, right?
yet
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Didn't like the demo at all.
While the combat was more immediate and responsive it feels way lighter and ineffectual than in the first. I really didn't like how fast it was and how it made me feel like none of my attacks meant anything at all.
Another thing I'm not a fan of at all is how they only have 3 classes for the entire game. What I love about Mass Effect is that you have like 4-5 different roles, and while some of them share some abilities they are all at least slightly differentiated. I know that you can guide your role down certain distinct paths but I think I would have liked it if they'd thought up some new roles. Rogue, Warrior, and Mage are just so basic and feel really bland.
As far as the art direction goes, I don't really know. My problem is that this area is the one they've been showing around the entire time and I find it to be unbelievably bland and boring. The environment also didn't really seem to mesh well with the character models.
As far as selling me on the game the demo did not do a good job at all. I'm going to wait for some of the reviews to come out and see how the changes they implemented work or don't. Curious to see what it's going to turn out like.
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I did enjoy the new combat, especially as a mage, though the beginning area wasn't a real promising area for combat with the severe lack of skills. second area made up for it for the most part. The main issue I see coming up for me is it's going to be a little odd pausing to give commands so much more often since the combat flows so much faster. I'll likely get used to it rather quickly but it is a pretty severe change from the slower pace of the first game.
It also kinda seems like specializing in damage for a mage isn't going to be such a dumb decision for this game and that kind of makes me happy Still will likely need to sprinkle a bit of CC in of course but this is better than the first game in that sense.
Art style I'm not sure about yet. The general character models certainly have benefited from it I think (minus the hilariously sized boobs) but this could just be colored by the fact that Dragon Age was not a pretty game in any sense of the word. I'm not surprised by Flemeth's change at all. With how much more stylized they are taking some of the other redesigned races and models she fits in perfectly fine. Not sure that I like her design all that much but I was quite attached to the idea of her just looking like an old crazy lady in the woods.
As far as the number of classes go, I just can't get behind that complaint because there are easily 3 - 4 ways you could develop each class in the game and they seem like they would fill very different roles. It just doesn't bother me that they didn't artificially increase the number of classes with different names.
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Eh? Specializing in damage was more than fine in the first game-- if anything it was kinda overpowered, really. Making lyrium literally earned you money, so there wasn't any mechanical reason to avoid chain potting since they didn't follow through on the addiction system as originally planned. And even if you didn't constantly chug potions on cooldown you could still crush opponents quickly by running 2 mages instead of one. Magical damage was really only underwhelming if you expected a single mage to carry the entire group's damage on their back without the benefit of potions. Even then you could still provide great single target snap damage, and as I said earlier, 2-3 mages was just a straight up wrecking ball since collectively you had the mana pool to do some serious hurt even with minimal lyrium abuse.
/rant
Anyway, I'm not about to pass judgement on the only-3-classes thing until I see how much choice you have within those 3 classes. Hopefully I'll be able to bang out the demo soon, but my download apparently got interrupted last night, unfortunately.
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Ah see, I never found damage specialization to be all that great in DA when compared to going pure crowd control. Of course I never bothered with multiple mage runs because when I did try it, it just felt incredibly silly and easy no matter the difficulty.
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In the original I'd run as a CC/dmg Mage with Morrigan there for additional CC/dmg or the old bird for CC/healing. Alistair was the tank, and I'd rotate the remaining slot as required through a damage melee, ranged and rogue for detection. Did me pretty well. I've downloaded the demo, will give it a run through this weekend probably.
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I finished the demo and the basketball tits really are pretty crazy.
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as is isabella's fucking lip piercing
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all the female character designs are invitations for fans to draw them holding throbbing cocks and like ok the dudes aren't quite so terrible but for some reason the dwarf design i find unsettling though that might be compounded by his conspicuous and unnerving american accent
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I like that! Standard scottish dwarves are so boring.
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I can't say I noticed the basketball tits until the internet pointed them out.
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I noticed. It was pretty absurd.
However, the internet made me expect a much worse game than I played in that demo. So, wtvr I guess. I didn't enjoy DA1 really. I never even finished it. But I can see playing through this maybe.
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as is isabella's fucking lip piercing
How so? I didn't notice anything off about it.
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I just finished the demo.
I think that rogues are really cool to look at but their focus on damaging one target kinda relegates them to Mage control and taking out archers and other low HP stuff.
But against like regular boss characters and warriors they seems really underpowered.
Like I managed to get my party wiped because I was distracted by food and I actually had a really fun time playing with the female mage character. Like I managed to solo the ogre.
It seems like any character is fast enough to avoid stuff so the rogue's little jump thing seems useless other than looking cool. Like I ran around with the mage and never got hit with an attack.
Honestly it's going to be a tough choice between Rogue and Mage. One just seems really cool and the other one seems more fun to play with.
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I'm definitely going mage this game. Though knowing my history with RPGs I'll likely make a couple dozen characters and eventually finish the game a year from release when I finally remember I never beat it.
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as is isabella's fucking lip piercing
How so? I didn't notice anything off about it.
Says the SNAKE MAN WITH THE SPLIT TONGUE!!! Only Lies and Untruths from the the forked tongue of the Yuan Ti!!!
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as is isabella's fucking lip piercing
How so? I didn't notice anything off about it.
what's off about it is that she looks completely different and like just inflicts serious cognitive dissonance on me! it's just completely bizarre. i mean, in a movie or tv show i'm kind of willing to accept a drastic change in appearance because like a character might be played by someone else. but the way she looks in this game vs. how she looked in the first one is like so drastic but there's almost no reason for it. i can't figure out why an engine upgrade necessitates a boobtastic lip-pierced "edgy" version of the exact same character.
compare it with how they handled character redesigns in me2, you know? like you saw the same characters and they looked a little nicer but pretty much the same, right? garrus got a badass new scar but the first time you saw him he just looked like, well, garrus. with this game i like can't figure out why the art direction went to such gaudy extremes AND revamped extant characters in a way that like doesn't jibe with the first game at all.
and i dunno something about the dwarf guy just rubs me the wrong way i guess. maybe it's the noir dialogue.
i get the feeling that this demo really doesn't sell the game the way it wants to, you know? especially considering how, well, short it actually is, for a two-gig download. everything's condensed and rushed, and the fact that i'm not able to get a feel for the characters compounded with the like grating redesigns of some principals is frustrating. for what it's worth i think they've done the ME2 thing when it comes to the game's systems – that is, refined and narrowed and honed and trimmed away a ton of the fat. that, i like. i think it'll be fun to play. but there's a ton of stuff in the demo aesthetic- and story-wise that really make me furrow my brow.
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Ah, that's perfectly fair. I'm so conflicted on the art style right now. I think I'm going to end up liking it but it is a rather harsh change. For Isabella I honestly didn't see the lip piercing as all that edgy considering they made her a bit more decorated in general. Mixed with the style of earrings she has for example doesn't exactly scream edgy, it just screams Caribbean pirate. It is still a bit odd how much they changed her, but I can only guess they figured if they were going to go with a more stylistic approach anyways they might as well go whole hog. The boobs are still absolutely ridiculous.
The only thing I can think that might bother you with the dwarf might be that he has a massive jaw. It kind of looks like the Dwarven head proportions might have been changed slightly, but I could be wrong.
I definitely think the demo was just kinda... meh for the most part. I liked what they showed off but I felt like there wasn't enough play time allowed with the actual skills and skill trees. Hopefully, they managed to pull the story side of things all together though. I quite enjoyed the first (despite quite a few flaws it is probably my favorite Fantasy RPG since BGII, though ME stil has it beat hands down in general) and as long as they keep things consistent in this particular game I'll probably quite enjoy myself.
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I've just stopped looking at the boobs on female characters in all video games, its getting to the point of silliness now. Then again there was always Wynne in Origins, that showed off the limits of the engine if nothing else. That said, apparently Bethany undergoes "reduction" between the overpowered bit at the start and the demo section proper.
@ Caleb, at higher levels the "backflip" thing confuses people when you jump away from them, though I am dissapointed that you need to upgrade an ability to make it useful.
I really enjoyed the demo, I liked the sound of all the characters and the new design I can more than understand to make the characters more distinctive. In origins I frequently had to try and tell what people meant by their vocal intonations, because the faces were those of serious stroke victims (my inability to read people in real life doesn't help). This time around people actually seemed to be feeling stuff and I could tell, which is always a plus. The dwarves haven't been changed all that much (other than Party member ones) as they appeared to be closest to the design's that were originally put forward for them.
Had a deal of fun and I am now looking forward to the game proper.
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Ok, so I just tried to play the game and the intro movie was fucked up and the camera kept looking atht ewrong places and the dwarf was standing up in the chair and the book was hovering about with a dagger in it. Fucking odd.
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Yeah and I got a little way after the point where you meet up with Aveline and her dipshit husband and got really bored with the "ANOTHER WAVE!" bullshit and stopped. This is not a good demo. It does not get me excited about the game.
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If this "first the Legend, then the Reality!" thing is going to remain consistent throughout the game (hopefully not) they ought to at least introduce some uncertainty as to which is really accurate. Playing the same sequences twice would get old very quickly.
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the new darkspawn also look really silly
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I get a Ray Harryhausen vibe from them.
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Apparently it doesn't KvP.
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I get a Ray Harryhausen vibe from them.
That's not silly that's awesome.
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It goes without saying.
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For Isabella I honestly didn't see the lip piercing as all that edgy considering they made her a bit more decorated in general. Mixed with the style of earrings she has for example doesn't exactly scream edgy, it just screams Caribbean pirate.
Seriously though, go look at female characters in Monkey Island. She's a goddamn pirate.
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I get a Ray Harryhausen vibe from them.
I'm thinking Skeletor. I've heard comparisons to the putties from Power Rangers.
They put an instakill button right on the chest! Who does that?
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I get a Ray Harryhausen vibe from them.
i get a different vibe from them (http://www.google.ca/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&biw=1440&bih=747&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=latex+hooded+skull+mask&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=)
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I feel so sorry for you, Johnny.
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If this "first the Legend, then the Reality!" thing is going to remain consistent throughout the game (hopefully not) they ought to at least introduce some uncertainty as to which is really accurate. Playing the same sequences twice would get old very quickly.
That would be silly.
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If the exaggerations are onetime things how would you explain these?
(http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3342/bd7132e1fb4b6ff519d0621.jpg)
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Don't make fun of her balloontitsitus.
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If the exaggerations are onetime things how would you explain these?
they're slammin'
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If the exaggerations are onetime things how would you explain these?
Who said they were a one time only thing?
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Camera angle maybe? I dunno, I guess we (or who ever romances fenris) will find out for themselves.
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Perhaps they look normal mostly but then any time she gets them out she casts Lvl 3 Bazongas on 'em. +2 Cunning, -2 Dexterity. Characters attracted to females must make a Willpower saving throw against Disorientation.
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there aren't enough dice in the world to save me from oogling boobs
i wish there were, but there just aren't
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Just wrapped up the demo. Thoughts:
- VA is pretty good all-around. I've heard a lot of complaints about female Hawke, but she isn't Mark Meer. Not by a long shot.
- Like JC says, the character designs get pretty retarded. Specifically, the further away you get from plate armor, the worse it gets. While I can give a free pass to the lip stud, the fact that Isabella is wearing a thong with a shirt flap over her ass, well, even I never thought Bioware would go that far into fanservice territory (that's not even touching her dialog). I'm really disliking the visual direction of the game. The last straw for me is the excessive retconning of everything (Flemeth, the Dalish, the Darkspawn, the Qunari) into designs that, if they don't improve upon old designs, are actually much worse. Flemeth is an anime villain now.
- Level design is really bad, at least in the demo. Jade Empire bad. Hopefully the brief city segment with the street fighting is an actual hub area in the game itself.
- Combat is more terribly boring than I remember, on PC anyway. I find it more tedious than DA:O's, which at least had a tactical element. How did real-time DPS-based combat like this ever become an agreed-upon good thing? I'm hoping the console will allow me to insta-kill the trash mobs, at least.
All that combined with numerous review leaks seeming to agree on an underwhelming / undercooked finale and a lack of a clear villain until the climax (both things that tend to hobble Bio's storytelling) have my expectations at their lowest they've ever been for a Bioware game.
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Oh come on they just wanted to make flemeth look more dragon like. I think that at the very least is excusable.
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My biggest gameplay issue was the terrible camera. If you are going to swarm us with enemies, let us fucking zoom out to see all of them. Having to look at the minimap to find stranglers was pretty lame. The menus were also broken horribly, but I'm guessing that you can actually press buttons in the final release.
The abilities worked great, though. They made sense, did cool things, and all had a noticeable effect. Short cooldown forces you to either use pause a lot, or set up a bunch of tactics. It still feels that they've left a lot of the cool tactics options in favour of flashy DPS, but I'm not sure how much the cool tactics from the last game was intended or just me breaking the game (sneak rouge over, open door, close door, place a million traps outside door, aoe everything inside). Mages doing a lot of damage with their standard attack might make every other class redundant, except maybe a tank.
The character design is just... It's possible to make more than one model for male and female bodies for every race. When everyone has the exact same ridicolous boobs, stuff has just gotten out of hand. I can buy Flemeth wearing her war gear or something, which would make sense.
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Oh come on they just wanted to make flemeth look more dragon like. I think that at the very least is excusable.
I would agree but 1) she's not really a dragon and 2) it's not just a dubious aesthetic choice, it's a total retcon of the character. I mean, in DA:O you met her as this little old lady who lived in the woods who obviously had something up her sleeve but you didn't know what until you confronted her on Morrigan's behalf. Her appearance made sense - one got the impression that she turned into a dragon under those specific circumstances because she was being challenged, not because she's a badass. It's emphasized repeatedly that Flemeth doesn't want attention from the Templars, which is exactly why she looks and acts and lives the way she does. She relies on her status as a mythic figure to avoid notice.
DA2 throws all that out the window - she's showboating out in the open for no apparent reason (and dressing like a powerful mage woman), and while it's clear she's set up as a master manipulator and obvs has some plan for Hawke (GUESS the amulet she gives you is some sort of phylactery that prevents her from being permanently slain by the Grey Warden /GUESS) it's still mighty cavalier of her given her shrewd nature in the first game. My guess is since the Shapeshifter cat's out of the bag in the DA:O storyline the devs feel as if there's no reason to act as though her true nature was ever really hidden, which, if it's true, is a really shit way to approach character development. Fundamental changes in the character were instituted to provide action setpieces as well as make the PC feel important (so important that Flemeth takes special notice of him / her and appears in her "true form"), as well as to make her more lonely geek-friendly (hence the silver fox supermodel body).
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Well, about 1? There is a fair old amount of speculation as to her being an Old God. So who knows she actually MIGHT be a dragon/sleeping ancient being.
I must admit I don't understand why people are crying "anime", I mean I can understand not liking the change to aesthetic (and personally I don't want to jump around for the new hurlocks) but I really don't see the anime comparisons. Even the weird hair is most likely something they would have given her in Origins had they the tech. Same as the Qunari and horns. And the fact that she eats, or at least is implied to do various horrific things, to templar’s that follow her shows that she doesn't really care as much as she might be trying to keep Morrigan from not getting badly damaged and missing out on her next form. Then again that is fanwank on my part.
And even in Origins they were setting her up as having survived, Morrigan says that she will "be back", so whilst the amulet may play into it I am not sure that she did not already have plans laid out. That and shape shifting in Flemeth's case? Well she might actually have appeared differently to different people, Morrigan mentions that she can appear beautiful to templars who are hunting her, and as a crone in other cases, so why not now?
And if you don't enjoy it then thats awesome. At least you aren't bitching about it like most of the people on the DA forums, and your points (whilst refutable) are all well thought out and smart. Sorry if this comes across as condescending its just nice to have someone to politely disagree with.
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Based on the demo I will not be buying this game. If I see something later to change my mind then I guess I'm open to reconsidering, seeing as the original was a really fun game. But there's evidence of so many shit decisions made, pushing the game very far away from what the first one was. I was overwhelmingly bored within the first 5-10 mins of the demo, while fast-paced fighting was happening. That is not supposed to happen in a demo. The fighting is just straight up boring, and the new controls are a bit of a clusterfuck.
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Even the weird hair is most likely something they would have given her in Origins had they the tech. Same as the Qunari and horns.
That's an odd rationalization. Based on the Desire Demon design (http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091206144942/dragonage/images/2/29/NPC-Desire_Demon_Connor.jpg), head protrusions were definitely within their tech capabilities for DA:O. I think Gaider hand-waved the Qunari retcon by saying that "elite qunari" have horns and others don't, which doesn't make a lot of sense, but the character design seems to be based around "cool shit" more than anything (which is why it's compared it to anime, where costumes, hairstyles and tits are routinely exaggerated beyond all practicality or sense). The Flemeth hair thing is just ridiculous and dumb, but the Qunari thing is baffling and dumb, and if nothing else shows Bioware's immense dissatisfaction with the world they created in DA:O, such that they would change so much so quickly.
That and shape shifting in Flemeth's case? Well she might actually have appeared differently to different people, Morrigan mentions that she can appear beautiful to templars who are hunting her, and as a crone in other cases, so why not now?
Fair point. I suppose with the blight and all she probably doesn't need to worry about a strong Chantry response to her presence anyway. But I think on some level it makes the most sense for her to remain a commonly dismissed subject of folklore, which makes her DA2 behavior a little inconsistent. We'll have to see how it pans out, because at present it seems to me like she's being presented in an inconsistent way because she's familiar and formidable.
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Actually no, I take back the part about the controls. I forgot that I mostly played Mage last time around, so playing the demo as a Warrior felt kinda odd. Playing again with a Mage character feels a bit better. It's still a weird, zoomed-in view though, so it's kinda hard to jump from char to char easily at the moment. Maybe it'll feel more natural with practice.
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Could be destiny, could be that the party was nearby and she keeps a track of templars near her hideout? I dunno, it probably is a bit inexplicable but I don't mind all that much, imagine how many failed stories of parties a bit like Hawke's in the wilderness.
It was more "head protrusions and helmets", they can do head things, but they couldn't do it with helms and other headgear. Hence why the Ogres had horns but Sten and his Qunari friends did not (as a side note, totally optioning "Sten and his Qunari friends" as a cartoon for Nickelodeon). I think they were dissatisfied with the tech and with the place they set it in. They had created a large world then had a generic "gather your army and fight the dragon" set up, which whilst not BAD was not as interesting,
And from a lore perspective some Qunari are born without horns (they are usually put into units together and are considered different but not worse) and some of the Tal'vashoth (the Qunari rebels) remove theirs.
And you might not like it, seems fine by me though I am sure some of the more rabid areas of the fanbase would disagree. I am getting the Special edition as a Christmas present though, so I might be a tad biased.
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Ok, just tried giving it another go with a mage as main character, but I had to stop, because I encountered three new bugs that made the game unplayable:
1. the voice acting and music cuts in and out, especially during cutscenes
2. occasionally when I have all chars selected none of them listen to movement commands, and when I switch to individual characters the others run around randomly
3. every character moves at about half-pace compared to previous attempts to play the game
This is what they serve up as a demo?
I have to admit though, what I could play of the game felt a lot more enjoyable as a Mage. Perhaps I'll wait and see how the final game pans out. Also, if someone releases some sort of FOV/zoom change, or if we can change something in a settings cfg file to make it zoom farther out I will probably feel a bit better about things.
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Check the bioware feedback forum, they usually have good advice. I personally haven't seen people encounter these problems specifically, so I do not know how to help.
And don't worry, people are already going to start modding the camera. I am pretty sure it will be the first one avaliable after release.
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I don't get all the hate for the new art style. Yeah, sure, the new Darkspawn are a little naff, but it's not like they're the main villains any more and the hills near Lothering seem to have been tainted a touch quickly. However Mr. Gaider has been pretty straight up that most of the work in the game has been put into Kirkwall and I think it shows. From what I've seen of Kirkwall so far, especially in the DX11 screen-shots, it looks bloody marvellous.
The human models I think are an improvement overall and barring a few questionable judgement calls (pants will not reduce Isabella’s sex appeal any, I assure you, or did she lose them with her ship?) there are no game breaking issues for me. I actually particularly like Anders new model and Varric's as well.
As for the combat, well its far from the best system I've played, but at normal compared the DA:Os normal, I have no real issues. If it gets too easy, I'll switch it up to hard. I play Bioware games for the story and dialogue mostly anyway. From what I've seen the dialogue and VA's are anywhere from decent to very good. The story has yet to be unveiled but as I've yet to but utterly disappointed by any Bioware story I'm not especially worried.
In fact, the whole personal story rather than the whole "epic world saving adventure" shtick seems an improvement to me.
To put this in comparison, I prefer KoTOR2 (even broken and half finished) to the originals twist/shock ending.
To me at least, DA2 seems to have shaped up okay. I'll let you know if the story changes my mind.
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:psyduck:
Est, if you're running on the PC, you may want to turn DX11 off, it's horribly broken for the demo.
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Ok, just tried giving it another go with a mage as main character, but I had to stop, because I encountered three new bugs that made the game unplayable:
1. the voice acting and music cuts in and out, especially during cutscenes
Does it flicker or does it periodically hitch? Because for some reason DA2 seems to load between spoken lines, and that might be the culprit. It definitely disrupts the flow of conversation.
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This is what happens when you use and older build for your demo :/
A demo done well is the Shogun 2 demo. That was a game I was not interested in (much) and now want, this is a bit too normal/fighty for it to draw new people in.
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I would agree but 1) she's not really a dragon and 2) it's not just a dubious aesthetic choice, it's a total retcon of the character.
that's the thing for me, they haven't just changed how she looks, they've changed how she looks and acts and they've done it for reasons that aren't really clear to me. she's like a much worse character now. i'm seriously so scared about what they'll do with the quanari, too.
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I am not sure I can get behind it being a total change of character for the reasons Josef stated. I'm also not sure I can make this judgement on her character in such a short scene.
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Complete change of character? I am not sure it is complete... she still appears to be talking in a circular way, still seems to be able to transform into a dragon and still seems to have Janeway's voice.
But then I am a fan. Probably best to take my opinions with salt.
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I would agree but 1) she's not really a dragon and 2) it's not just a dubious aesthetic choice, it's a total retcon of the character.
that's the thing for me, they haven't just changed how she looks, they've changed how she looks and acts and they've done it for reasons that aren't really clear to me. she's like a much worse character now. i'm seriously so scared about what they'll do with the quanari, too.
Actually, she acts like that in the books they released with the first game. It was kinda of a weird dissonance back then more than now if you read them.
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Had a listen to the PC Gamer podcast, and in general they thought that the game was excellent, with one noteable exception.
The ending. Now I am not sure wether this means cliffhanger or something odder, but it as this appears to be a large niggle that has turned up in a few reviews I think anyone whose planning on renting/buying it should be ready. In my own case I don't mind as long as the story overall is fun.
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I imagine it's an abrupt and underwhelming boss fight, which is something that most developers, including Bioware, struggle with. Dead Space 2, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Alpha Protocol (had several). It's just hard to pull off.
One of the reviewers let slip via Twitter or something that there's a repeat of ME2's "split up the team and assign roles" sequence, which might be cool. I'd be more excited if I didn't suspect that whatever implications it has for DA3 will be glossed over in favor of fleshing out DA:O's choices.
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I'm actually having difficulty thinking of the last time I had a really satisfying boss fight.
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Slightly offtopic: Have you played Painkiller? That game had some epic bosses. Here you can see the first one. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLnghiH9uBU)
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I'm actually having difficulty thinking of the last time I had a really satisfying boss fight.
Shadow of The Colossus?
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Painkiller is good example of how a boss can be fun to look at but sorta shitty to fight. Towering bosses tend to feel "off" in such games because even the best fps features a pretty damn limited field of view and sense of depth perception. Thus all that looming above you and dropping their fists in from outside your field of view stuff just makes for a somewhat cheap and disorienting experience as they trundle about taking damage but not really reacting much to what you do. Even 3rd person perspective games like Shadow of the Colossus can have a hard time wrangling these fundamental issues-- And Shadows was a game that was practically about size disparities. God of War is another example of a series that managed often managed to pull of the normal dude, HUGE BOSS dichotomy without making things too cheap but oftentimes they did it by keeping the player on a short leash and concentrating the fight onto one plane at a time.
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Yeah, something like the end boss in ME2 might have been great but it was really just a big hitbox with lots of health that sent minions to attack you so it played like every other fight against the collectors. You hardly even fight it, really. It's just a thing to shoot at between waves of mooks.
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Shadow of the Colossus has a simple button click that centres your sight on the colossus, and shows the entire thing. I've just played through the first six of them, and I never had any problems seeing anything at all.
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So I played the demo - was DA: O just button mashing too?
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Nope, not at all - it was a pretty good, but partially flawed tactical RPG, pretty much Baldur's Gate only not D&D nor as awesome. I'm not sure about the xbox version. I didn't really feel that the demo was button mashing on the pc either, but if you have to press for every attack on the console, that must be the worts gameplay decission ever.
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Shadow of the Colossus has a simple button click that centres your sight on the colossus, and shows the entire thing. I've just played through the first six of them, and I never had any problems seeing anything at all.
It's the kind of thing that really only gets put into a game because you're a smart enough developer to realize just annoying the problem they're trying to fix is. Don't misunderstand me-- I loved Shadow of the Colossus. Team ICO are some of the best devs going, hands down, but I don't really trust anyone but them or SCE Santa Monica to do a gigantic boss without it being one of the more boring/shitty parts of the game.
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Nope, not at all - it was a pretty good, but partially flawed tactical RPG, pretty much Baldur's Gate only not D&D nor as awesome. I'm not sure about the xbox version. I didn't really feel that the demo was button mashing on the pc either, but if you have to press for every attack on the console, that must be the worts gameplay decission ever.
Huh, I was hoping the button-mashing would be more intuitive than "click, watch health bar drain" PC combat.
Naturally I pre-ordered DA2 for PC :I
Ladies & gentlemen, the Bioboards (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6267433&lf=8)
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John I'm beginning to think you've got Battered Spouse Syndrome
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P.S; Are we absolutely sure Gaider isn't a gag account?
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It would be pretty funny if it was.
The Bioboards are like the Westboro Baptist Church of the internet. I can't look away. Apparently somewhere deep within the ME2 board is a chart someone actually made theorizing what all the different characters' sweat tastes like. You can't help but marvel at that.
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God help me do I ever want to see that chart. Wowza
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I thought the westboro baptist church was the westboro baptist church of the internet.
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God help me do I ever want to see that chart. Wowza
this alien sweat is makin me thirsty. jerry
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Nope, not at all - it was a pretty good, but partially flawed tactical RPG, pretty much Baldur's Gate only not D&D nor as awesome. I'm not sure about the xbox version. I didn't really feel that the demo was button mashing on the pc either, but if you have to press for every attack on the console, that must be the worts gameplay decission ever.
Quite a lot of people seem to like it.
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A lot of people like a lot of shit things.
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Artistry and entertainment are considered "good" or "bad" dependent on how and why you enjoyed it. Not by how many people liked or disliked it.
There, that should stop that particular line of arguement by putting the basics out there for all to see.
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My point was more that if more people like it than don't, then, from a profitability stand point, it's pretty much a success.
Besides apparently the console versions have an option to turn auto attack on if you prefer to make it more like DA:O it's just disabled by default.
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Oh come on they just wanted to make flemeth look more dragon like. I think that at the very least is excusable.
She's an ancient abomination/witch/seductress/kidnapper/etc., the vamp get up/guise(probably) seems par for the course.
I just played the demo this morning, it wasn't all that crash-hot so I probably won't preorder it. I couldn't make sense of Isabella's design except maybe she likes to get super tanned every where and she has big tits (great if you like that, I s'pose). I got more than a little annoyed with the radial menu not showing up for a while when switching between characters in it. The menus are certainly better designed than on PC DA:O and I'm glad that the loot notification doesn't pause the game and take up the whole/most of the screen. Mashing A to keep attacking is unnecessary (the enemy is still targeted and alive, just attack him) so I hope you guys are right about this being toggled.
As someone who plays mage half the time, the option to toggle helmets made me squee.
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For those interested, a hacker over at SA came up with a mod for the demo that unlocks character gen and higher difficulties. git it (http://mod.gib.me/dragonage2/demo/chargen.7z). Just extract to My Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age 2 Demo\
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Ah, that didn't take long.
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Dude's pretty good at this stuff. He usually just unlocks console-only DLC for PC versions of the game (managed to add all the stuff in Dead Space 2 the devs left out) but this time he just wanted to see what he could come up with. He also found the dev console that spoils pretty much the entire game.
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The console is is horribly addictive and makes for soft gamers.
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DA2 vanilla is plenty soft (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BrGmMRHBZ8) :3
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PAUSE PAUSE STRATEGY PAUSE PAUSE OH GOD OH GOD PAUSE PAUSE MY HEART PAUSE PAUSE ARRGH *whole party is dead*
*has to run like a bitch from the dark spawn*
OH GOD NIGHTMARE MODE IS SO EASY, BIOWARE SUX
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I don't know why anyone would use Carver as a tank. He drops so quickly it's a joke. PC potion use also seems to be bugged - on consoles it's a per-character cooldown but a lot of people (including me) have experienced universal cooldown for potions on the PC. A lot of tactics settings also seem to bug out.
:D DAVID GAIDER DLC FANFIC :D
Sebastian – Short Story
Princes aren't meant for chastity.
That's what I've been telling myself since my parents' soldiers dragged me to this cloister and left me to rot. They say I'm a disgrace to the Vael family name, that I'll be a weight around my brother's neck when he comes to rule Starkhaven. I say, if you're a prince with no power, you might as well use your title to have some fun.
"Sebastian?" The voice of my jailor, Captain Leland of my parents' personal guard, loyal to the death. In this case, my death. "Do you need anything more tonight, Your Highness?"
"I'm fine." Let him leave. I need to be alone. A moment, then his footsteps echo down the hall. We've done this every night; he should trust that I'll stay in my cell, obedient, asleep.
I unfold the note that was under my plate in the dining hall.
Sebastian— I know you hate it here. If you wish to leave, come to the back entrance at midnight. I'll make sure no one disturbs us.
It's a woman's handwriting, thin and gently looped. I wonder again who might have written it. Another novice, surely. There was a pretty girl I saw praying at the altar the other day; perhaps she was also given here against her will.
I check the door. I've been good; they haven't yet taken to locking me in. I mutter a quick prayer, "Andraste help me out of here and—"
The irony hits me and I stop. It's not that I don't believe. I've been faithful in my own way. I learned the Chant as a boy and can still jump in on any verse. I've tithed faithfully, what little coin I've ever called my own. I've stood up for what is right: I've fought against Tevinter's slavers setting foot in Starkhaven, I've been kind to our elves. And in return, Andraste's gotten me out of a good number of scrapes. It never seemed strange before today to ask Her aid in winning a lady's heart or a bar brawl. But can I truly ask Her to help me escape Her service?
Let me leave now, I plead silently, and you can have whatever you ask of me later. When I'm old. I'll gladly take vows in my retirement, like Grandfather, just don't make me give up my life now.
The hall is empty. No sign one way or the other if She heard.
My bow is in my hands. Grand Cleric Elthina insisted I be allowed to keep my belongings, thank the Maker.
There's a candle lit at the end of the hall. I loose an arrow, and it passes through the wick, leaving us in darkness. I wait, but no one comes. I am alone.
I run lightly and silently down the woven Antivan rug. I'm used to moving in darkness. At the end of the hall, a large window is shuttered against the winter chill. The wood is stiff with the dampness and difficult to move, but a hard shove of my shoulder gets one side opened to the night. There are no trees outside the Kirkwall Chantry, but I'm in luck. One of the outbuildings is wood, and tall enough to use.
There's a coil of rope at my hip, left to me by my mysterious partner-in-crime. I make a tight knot just past the fletching of an arrow and let it fly. With a quick addendum to my earlier prayer, I think, All right, Andraste, if you're going to let your Mothers catch me, do it, but just let this arrow hold. I can't think of a worse way to die than breaking my neck while trying to climb out the Chantry's window.
And she must be listening because the rope is taut, the arrow is strong, my grip is good, and in a heartbeat, my legs hit wood and I'm spooling the rope out slowly, climbing down.
A shadow moves below. For a moment I curse that I need both hands for the rope, and my bow is hanging uselessly from my back. Then I shake my head. If someone catches me, I won't fight. I have no hatred for anyone in this Chantry; they are good people, serving the Maker as they can. My complaint is with my parents, for sending me here as punishment, for forcing me to a vow of celibacy to protect my brothers' children from any rival heirs I might beget.
I will kill no one for my freedom. It's mine to value as I will and it's not worth a single life.
I drop to the ground and my boots stick in the clay. And now I see what I couldn't before. More than one person is waiting for me in the darkness of the Chantry's wall. This can't be my mysterious collaborator— she would be alone, not flanked by templars. For a moment, I think to flee, but my early training is too much. If I've lost this battle, I'll at least lose it with dignity. Princes never run.
One of the forms steps forward. It is a woman, grey-haired and crimson-robed.
"I see you got my note."
My heart leaps— can it be her after all, my fellow rebel novice? But then I recognize the voice. I've heard it, after all, for most of my life, leading the Chant in Kirkwall, in Starkhaven, throughout the Free Marches. Grand Cleric Elthina, Mother of us all.
"Y-your Grace," I stammer. Then it hits me. "You sent that note?"
She turns to the templars. "Leave us," she says briskly, but they hesitate. "I am in no danger from His Highness."
The templars leave and we are alone in the darkness.
"You sent the note?" She nods. "And the rope?" Again. Now I'm getting angry. "Why? Just so I'd show you how desperate I am? Do you think this is funny?"
"I wrote because I understand how you feel."
"I'm at your mercy here. Did you really need to taunt me with it?"
"Sebastian." Her voice is sharp enough to make me meet her eyes. They are dove-grey, soft, compassionate. "I am sworn to Andraste's service, but that does not make me ignorant of the world. I know it's not your choice to be here."
"It's not that I don't have faith—" I feel the need to explain.
"I know." Her voice is low, sad, and I suspect she's telling the truth. "Your parents want to use the Chantry to further their political goals." She pauses. "That is not an act of faith."
She takes my hand in hers and turns it over. She sets a bag in it, heavy with coin. I look inside — all gold. "This is the endowment they made in your name. If this isn't the life you want, use it to make another." As I stare, dumbfounded, she gently closes my fingers. "People serve the Maker in many ways, Sebastian. You don't need to take vows to do His work."
She gives me a crooked smile, deepening the lines in her face, then turns to walk inside. As her hand touches the door, I find my voice.
"But why?"
Elthina turns, and the moonlight gives her a glowing halo that I'm sure is no accident. "Because no one should ever enter the Chantry through the back door," she says. "The only one who can make this commitment is you, Sebastian. The front door will always be open."
With that, she's inside, and I'm alone in the night. I look at the bag of coins, enough to be free of my family, my titles, forever. Enough to start the life I've always wanted, free to follow my whims, to laugh and love where I choose. Enough to be…
Words race through my head: useless, aimless, selfish, alone.
I was in a tavern when Captain Leland found me. Is that where I want to meet my Maker?
Before I'm aware of it, my feet are moving, taking me out of the shadows, into the full light of torches and moon. "Thank you, " I whisper to Andraste, before my hand touches the smooth bronze of the door handle, and I walk into the Chantry. From the front.
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Wait, doesn't the ogre kill Carver?
I have to admit, I actually carked it against the Ogre the first time round because I have been playing a lot of AC and shooters. I only really learn how to use a games control after the first time I die; I suck at gaming.
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If you start as a gal you get carver, bethany dies, if you start as a guy you get bethany, carver dies.
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If you start as a gal you get carver, bethany dies, if you start as a guy you get bethany, carver dies.
Maybe if you're a male warrior or rogue. I went male mage and Bethany died.
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Yeah, it's set up so you only have only one sibling and only one magic-user in the family. Mage -> Bethany dies. Warrior/Rogue -> Carver dies.
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so regarding the bigness of the tits and such, i thought/heard that the design of the game changes based on who is retelling the story. when the drawf tells it every girl looks hotter and wildly tittier than if the other person told it. am i dreaming this?
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I'm pretty sure someone said it, but hackers sifting through the files apparently have found only one body type for FemHawke. The huge knockers in the Fenris sex picture (ugh) are not the result of an unflattering camera angle, as it turns out.
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Just found out now that yes, DA:O saves are going to be ported into DA:2. I dunno why but for the longest time I didn't think this was a thing they were going to do. This means I'm going to have to start my game again on the PS3, since that's the console I pre-ordered the signature edition on because of the 360 shitting out on me and taking with it my two saves that I was pretty chuffed with.
Also, jesus shit I just decided to check out the bonus content. Pretty sure the only thing I won't have is the Dead Space 2 armor.
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Tried starting this up again the other night, got up to the same part (running through the narrow rock area at the start, just after picking up the warrior lady and her injured partner) the pathing went all fucked and split my party horribly and while I could have fireballed some mofos and joined everyone back up again, with all the shit I've been through so far I just looked at the screen disappointedly, thought "this is a really fucked game" and quit out.
I think I just don't like this game, which is a shame, because I really liked the first one.
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Just found out now that yes, DA:O saves are going to be ported into DA:2. I dunno why but for the longest time I didn't think this was a thing they were going to do. This means I'm going to have to start my game again on the PS3, since that's the console I pre-ordered the signature edition on because of the 360 shitting out on me and taking with it my two saves that I was pretty chuffed with.
Also, jesus shit I just decided to check out the bonus content. Pretty sure the only thing I won't have is the Dead Space 2 armor.
The save situation's a bit odd depending on what DLC you've played through.
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Chart of dialog icons:
(http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/9500/2w20qom.jpg)
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Game's leaked for consoles, from what people are saying the main storyline is really, really short (5-7 hours), but that's not really a revelation. One point of criticism is the friendship / rivalry system. In order to get gameplay rewards and missions from your companions you have to make sure that their meter is firmly on one side of the curve, which is to say, you can't be "neutral", you have to keep them either friends or rivals.
I've heard that it's pretty easy to fuck yourself out of missions (by being all buddy-buddy with Merrill but siding with the Templars in a dispute - Merrill seems to really have this problem badly, it even says so in the official strategy guide) so that sucks. The ME2 devs solved this problem by having paragon and renegade on two different axes.
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First official Merrill quote!
"Why do they call this a brothel? Does it have something to do with broth?
Looks like they were not kidding when they pointedly referred to her as a "virginal girl next door".
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yeah, someone i know picked this up at a fuckin swap meet. he said it seems a lot harder, he's died more often than DAO so far.
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Here's a list of the known bugs that DA2 will be shipping with. I'm mainly posting because of game-breaking / quest-breaking bug towards the bottom of the list. Heads up.
Balance
-------
- The warrior's Rally talent does not correctly extend the benefits
of sustained modes to other party members.
- The mage's Horror and Petrify spells say that they have a 100%
chance of applying against "any enemy." Although these spells are
indeed just as likely to apply to a boss-level enemy as a
normal-level enemy, some enemies are immune to certain effects, no
matter the enemy's rank. For example, ogres of any rank cannot be
stunned by any ability and are thus innately immune to Horror.
- The mage's Arcane Wall upgrade indicates that it extends the
benefits of Arcane Shield to other party members. Although this is
true, the upgrade reduces the effectiveness of Arcane Shield in
doing so and applies a reduced version of the effects to other
party members.
- Varric's Embellishment talent refers to a movement speed increase.
The ability does not affect movement speed but does affect attack
speed.
- The secondary penalties applied by status effects like STAGGER,
BRITTLE, and DISORIENT (reductions in enemy defense, for example)
are smaller than described in the codex. However, the cross-class
combo bonuses themselves (extra damage vs. STAGGERED enemies, for
example) work as described.
- In rare cases, character statistics can become corrupted in a
manner that does not block progress but might make combat easier or
more difficult than intended. For example, Hawke might not sustain
injuries after falling in combat or might develop a negative
damage resistance score.
- Nightmare difficulty adds several effects that are not described
in-game, including the following:
1) Attacks from party members that hit more than a single target
(including attacks from a two-handed warrior or a
weapon-and-shield warrior) are capable of harming fellow party
members as well as enemies.
2) Enemy assassins have a chance to steal potions.
3) When enemy assassins strike from stealth, they bypass the
victim's armor.
4) Enemy commanders are able to taunt their allies into attacking
a single member of the player's party en masse.
5) When party members fall below 10% health, they suffer bleeding
damage that will further erode their health unless they are
healed.
6) Various enemies become completely immune to certain types of
damage; for example, dragons become immune to fire damage.
Plots (Minor Spoilers)
----------------------
- Some side plots do not close properly if they are left uncompleted
when the story jumps forward in time. They remain open in the
journal but cannot be completed in the new timeline. They do not
prevent the game from proceeding and can be ignored.
- In some cases, characters in conversation make inaccurate
references to earlier events in Dragon Age II or to the events of
Dragon Age: Origins, if you imported a saved game.
- In the plot Fools Rush In, it is occasionally possible to pick up a
letter before Isabela tells you to do so. This prevents the plot
from progressing. To complete the plot, restore from an earlier
save and do not pick up the letter until Isabela says to search the
bodies.
- The plot Finders Keepers cannot be completed if you leave the
warehouse before finding the crate. This does not block progress in
the game as a whole.
- After you acquire the plot Who Needs Rescuing, the plot's opening
events sometimes fail to trigger. The plot cannot be completed if
this occurs, but this does not block progress in the game's main
plot.
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That doesn't seem too bad for a newly released game. Considering New Vegas and all.
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DA2 will also have maybe half of the content of New Vegas.
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First official Merrill quote!
"Why do they call this a brothel? Does it have something to do with broth?
Looks like they were not kidding when they pointedly referred to her as a "virginal girl next door".
That's a paraphrase of one of Alistair's quotes from DA:O.
"Why do they call it a 'brothel?' There's no broth. Or is there?"
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They've re-used quotes elsewhere. I'm fairly sure one of the things Flemeth says in the demo was said by someone in DA:O.
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Yeah, this game definitely gives me the feel that it's been rushed through the dev cycle. I'd like to be proven wrong.
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Yep, and the bugs seem about, what, 1/3rd as bad?
But then I happily played V:tMB unpatched, so I am pretty easy going when it comes to bugs and glitches.
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Yeah, I mean unless the bug makes the game physically unplayable I'm generally pretty forgiving with them.
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That doesn't seem too bad for a newly released game. Considering New Vegas and all.
New Vegas is irrelevant- how many similar bugs have you actually seen in other BioWare games?
Worrisome.
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aoe spells is only going to affect party members on nightmare difficulty?
wat?
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There are a lot more AoE spells in this version. If they did it any earlier then the most common complaint would probably be "How am I supposed to deal with all these enemies when I accidentally killed my team". Although I would prefer it if it appeared at "hardest" instead of "nightmare" I guess we can't have it all.
I've seen a fair few bugs like this in bioware games, the quest related ones in Awakening were worse in my opinion (if only because they made upgrading the keep such a ballache).
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I think that in Origins, you got 50% damage from aoe on normal difficulty, and 100% on hard - they could've placed 50% on hard and 100% on nightmare.
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That doesn't seem too bad for a newly released game. Considering New Vegas and all.
how many similar bugs have you actually seen in other BioWare games?
BG2 actually had a hell of a lot of under-the-hood bugs, mainly stuff like what's outlined above, with the game telling you one thing and doing something entirely different. In some cases, like with "variable bonus" weapons (+2 long sword that's +4 against dragons, but ends up being +4 across the board) it gives the player an advantage, in other cases (numerous glitched Shapeshifter abilities) they handicap the player. It took years for community modders to sort it all out. But I think most of that was mainly due to the impossible task of shoving AD&D rules into a computer game-shaped hole. It was bound to spring a lot of leaks.
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BG2 was also 10 years ago at a time when polish was secondary to ambition.
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Awakening had some, ME2 had a few bad ones (if I remember correctly one mission just ran out of heatsinks), but they are just bugs, and to be honest the ones that have been highlighted above sound (to my fanboy ears) not exactly all that bad. Irritating to some I am sure, but not crippling to overall enjoyment.
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That's true. Aside from the quest breakers most players won't notice those bugs. And given they are known now I wouldn't be surprised if Bioware provides a launch day patch.
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(http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/6999/33d5cc413416875c8eeebff.jpg)
Racial differences allow us to explore different standards of beauty.
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"Think like a general fight like a Spartan". Marketing gumph (favorite word of the moment) and artist speak I can deal with if I like the company. And yes I do like bioware, I like most game companies and they seem to be trying to do fun things for people like me.
I know that pethe criticsms you have are valid, and it helps to keep gaming companies "honest", but I just like them and don't begrudge the occasional slip up (as long as it is a minor one) in the hopes that when I do something similar I don't get shouted at :P
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BG2 was also 10 years ago at a time when polish was secondary to ambition.
While today, polish is secondary to making a shitload of money.
wooo
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You know what. Enjoy your complaining and longing for the older games. I personally do not share this view and think that I have been talking about this opinion enough.
So, anyway, see you guys later. I am going to be gone for a while playing Echo Bazaar (which I would advise everyone to have a look at, its a lot of fun) and just stop reading the comments here. Have fun, and if you do decide to rent DA I hope you enjoy it.
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Sorry, I don't think that older games are "better" in any way. Hell, I'm so fucking excited for Skyrim that I don't know what to do in the meantime, and stuff like Minecraft and Mass Effect and the likes makes it clear that the medium is moving foreward. It's just sad to see that a company that used to make great games with deep, intriguing stories and a clear idea about what they wanted to say and do, has become a company that seems to focus on, well, tits and not so much else. There's probably a lot of ambition here, but from the demo it seems like they fail to get it across, and that's the big problem with DA2. The BG comment was probably not because "omg games /rpgs were better before Windows xp", but more a comment on how they were able to bring out the ambitions of being extraordinary.
There's a lot of games that does that today - Portal did it, Magicka does it, Minecraft, Psychonauts, etc. The great loss is that the biggest company around, one that used to have immense ambitions, seems like it's been reduced to jiggly motions and fast, unninvolving gameplay. It'll probably be fun, but when you have that much money, time and talent to work with, you should reach further than what the demo showed.
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It's just sad to see that a company that used to make great games with deep, intriguing stories and a clear idea about what they wanted to say and do, has become a company that seems to focus on, well, tits and not so much else.
Honestly I think that's an incredibly silly thing to say. It kind of reeks of false nostalgia.
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also mass effect was made by the same guys
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Derailing the thread in this particular direction seems sorta silly to me since I have sympathy for both sides and because I think it's easy to talk past each other on this subject since it depends on how you define ambitious. In the past I do think RPGs tended to emphasize expansiveness--for lack of a better word-- over audio and visual polish. Not because developers dreamed bigger or anything, but rather because of the serious limitations to what you could do with a mid '90s intel and a Voodoo card. As KvP pointed out on the first page, requiring full VA and quality cinematic cutscenes makes having branching choice/consequence systems or weird sandboxes like Fallout 2 more expensive to implement. Whether we like it or not, there does come a tipping point where devs have to choose what exactly they think is most important to spend their time on. So while I don't think Bioware is really less ambitious than they were, I do sometimes find myself wishing their ambitions were pointed in a slightly different direction, at least with Dragon Age. I liked the idea of living in a world where we have a slick cinematic FPS-RPG hybrid in the ME series as well as a throwback to their Infinity Engine days in the Dragon Age series. So while I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised and enjoy the hell out of DA2, I must also say that I'm a bit afraid that I'll end up with something like the charming but seriously flawed Jade Empire.
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Man I wanted to love Jade Empire so much. I liked it but the fact it was so close to being really good irked me. I really wish they'd revisit that game or something similar and actually polish it up this time around.
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also mass effect was made by the same guys
Not specifically! Same company, different team. From what I understand, most of the talent for DA2 was pulled from DA:O and SWTOR personnel, whereas the ME guys have been working on ME almost exclusively. Gaider writes for all of Bioware's games but he's lead on DA games.
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i mostly meant in terms of calling out bioware as a company
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Official Xbox Magazine
Mar 2, 2011
[90]
Next to its predecessor, Dragon Age II may be a slightly altered beast, but the minute Isabela slyly chirps "I like big boats, I cannot lie" to a Desire Demon in the murky Fade, you'll realize this game offers some of the deepest, nerdiest, most worthwhile 40 to 60 hours you'll ever love losing sleep over. [April 2011, p.70]
Isabela sure sounds like a fun character
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Really? "I like big boats...."? If they don't have an "all your base" reference after that I will be disappoint.
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OK: Here is the story.
Auto-attack option for consoles was added in to the games late in the development cycle after the initial certification build was sent. The auto-attack functionality was sent to be added to the game for testing and approval. This was why staff said it was in game.
Due to an error during mastering, the auto-attack file was omitted during manufacture.
We apologize for this. It was meant to be in game, but it is not currently in the console versions. We are working on how best to distribute this to console users. When we have information, we will let everyone know.
So no auto-attack for the consolers, at least not for the near future.
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Reviews!
tag line: "action heavy combat, less classic RPG"
- great character interaction, action combat is fun
- story framing device is well implemented
- they say very little about combat, except that it's awesome to watch the rogue's combat animation and the Normal difficulty "almost plays itself"
- characters still have a number of equipment slots: rings, amulets, and belts.
- credible characters, non-credible game world: exploration is corridor based, even the best areas feel "sterile and lifeless"
- town areas are filled with lots of NPCs, who are described as barely animated, just dumbly standing around
- Kirkwall is "as clean as a barracks during officier's visit", no animals or smaller touches (we already knew this from the Chantry book chat)
- lots of quest areas have been recycled down to the last detail "five, six or more times"
- 88%
- PCgames.de (http://www.pcgames.de/Dragon-Age-2-PC-234093/Tests/Dragon-Age-2-im-Test-Actionreiche-Kaempfe-weniger-klassisches-Rollenspiel-814869/)
- We played DA2 for 50 hours. It only took us 29 hours to finish the first near-complete playthrough, but we kept going back and reloading to test all the different quest outcomes.
- the side quest centering around your share in a mine is divided into six miniquests that unlock as you progress through the three acts
- the game world feels dead, even the central market is empty and dull, random NPCs are lifeless, etc. etc. HOWEVER, you can hear town square discussions about the Warden's actions in DA:O
- "If you've seen one interior you've seen them all." They list a ton of repetitions, a dungeon in the sewers is identical with an above-ground slavers' hideout, etc. etc.
- too many loading screens
- MQ is 15 hours long
- many of the quests are offered through letters arriving at your home
- quests are as varied as the quest areas are identical (i.e. extremely)
- battles are compared to Doom 3 of all things - they hate enemies that keep spawning in your back even when your're standing in front of a dead end, but the boss battles are fun
- battle difficulty is similar to Awakening
- Spirit Mage + improved resurrection = invincible party. Generally the balance tips heavily towards mages.
- tremendous replayability
- Normal difficulty is extremely easy, can be played without ever using enchanting or crafting.
- interface too small and minimalistic, easy to click at the wrong thing in battle
- most items are useless
- companions rock
- 8.5
- Gamersglobal.de (http://www.gamersglobal.de/test/dragon-age-2)
Game Informer disappointed, gives it an 83% (people are gonna be pissed about that one)
So far:
PCGamer: 94
OXM/PS3M: 9/10
GamesMaster: 90
PC Games: 88
Gamestar: 87
Gamersglobal: 84
GameInformer: 83
SFX: 3.5/5
Given the state of game reviewing and the fact that this is a Bioware game, most of these are surprisingly low. Below 85 is a pan.
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First perfect score!
Like many people, I moved to a new place after college. I didn't know a soul in New York City or how to get around, and just buying groceries was an impossible task. By the time I left ten years later, I knew that town like nobody's business. I wasn't anyone special, but if you dropped me anywhere in the five boroughs, I could tell you a memory, which corner to avoid, and where to get a slice - the kind of familiarity you only get after exploring a location until it feels like home. That's what Kirkwall will feel like after playing Dragon Age II.
After the bombastic location-hopping in Origins, it's refreshing to experience such a personal story and become emotionally connected to the struggles of a single community. The framed narrative of Varric regaling the Chantry Seeker Cassandra with your deeds as you accomplish them is a unique presentation that makes the player feel like you are part of the history of Kirkwall, that the myriad of tasks and sidequests you complete are important not just for Hawke but for the whole city. Finding a serial killer who gives white lilies to his victims, or making a mine safe again so the workers can return feels somehow more meaningful than ridding the world of Darkspawn just because that's the plot dangled in front of you.
In fact, like Uncharted 2 and Empire Strikes Back, Dragon Age II is the rare sequel that improves upon its already excellent predecessor. The dialogue options inspired by BioWare's work on Mass Effect allow you to roleplay the voiced character of Hawke however you want. Thanks to handy symbols in the radial menu, you can be a snippy prig, a righteous hero, or a wiseass depending on your mood and the situation presented to you. Your mannerisms and choices will affect how your companions feel about you, but instead of only rewarding the player for placating, say, your friend Anders' desire for all mages to be free from the Circle, you also gain benefits from a contentious relationship. Get far along enough on either end of the spectrum from Friend to Rival and your companion will receive strong (and distinct) bonuses to combat.
I love this system, because it encourages you to make solid roleplaying decisions early. If you waffle and try to make nice when you actually can't stand Anders and his heavy-handed "Mages rock!" political stance, then you get no benefit at all. If I've learned anything from a lifetime of RPGs, mechanics that support storytelling and vice versa are the goal of all good game design and Dragon Age II manages this perfectly.
The party-based combat is frenetic, with no auto-attack making you feel in the thick of it with constant button-pressing. (If the no auto-attack annoys you, it's possible to turn this feature back on in the options.) I enjoyed taking a more active role and not being forced to pause after every spell or special move goes off to give more orders - although you can micro-manage the tactics if you're OCD about it. Even micro-managing is a breeze because you can pause and give separate orders to each character before you restart the combat. This, coupled with the move-to-point command, lets you order your party to move in separate directions and offers the finely-tuned tactical play that was only possible in the PC version of Origins. Orders you do make with the improved radial menu are immediate, rather than annoyingly waiting for your next strike or a spell animation to play, further quickening the pace of the action. Using the tactics menus to preprogram behaviors is more effective than ever before, with more intuitive triggers and options, and it allows you to focus on the character that you want to rather than babysitting one you don't.
Creating fun combinations of spells for a devastating effect, like using a fireball to start a grease fire in Origins, has now been expanded across all three classes with a concept called cross-class combos. Each class has a debuff they can bestow and abilities that do excessively more damage against the other class's debuffs. Rogues can disorient foes, which allows the warrior in the party to destroy lesser thugs with a single move that does triple or even sextuple damage. Mighty blows from warriors wielding two-handed blades stagger enemies, and mages can exploit that with a chain lightning spell for an instant death. The tactics system dovetails nicely with cross-class combos by allowing you to use the debuffs as triggers for abilities, again reducing the need to micro-manage and letting you to focus on the action of backstabbing the crazy Templar knight.
A slight drawback is that the spells and abilities with these combos are only available in a few of the many talent trees of each class and, because the damage that these combos generate is so above and beyond normal combat, it forces the savvy player into only investing in those trees, especially on the higher difficulties. Don't get me wrong, it's awesome when you smash a dude for tons of damage, but the combo abilities should have been peppered throughout all of the trees. Nobody likes forced choices producing a cookie-cutter party.
The difficulty level has been lessened so that on the default setting you don't feel like every fight means frustrating trial and error. There are still occasional fights that will kick your ass, especially with assassin-type enemies that stealth around the battlefield and pop up to take out your mages, but, in general, the curve may have been adjusted too strongly as even early boss fights can feel artificially easy. Players who grok the cross-class combo system, or who loved the challenge of avoiding friendly-fire in Origins, would do better to start on Hard or even Nightmare if you're saucy.
Any complaints I may have about Dragon Age II are minor annoyances, easily ignored for the leaps made in other areas. Simplifying the crafting system to reward the kind of player who must search every nook and cranny without muddying up the inventory is a novel change that was much needed in the genre. The triumphant sound that plays when you discover a new source of raw lyrium or a new recipe makes you feel good, but not as awesome as it feels to visit a crafting table and just be able to purchase the Elfroot potions or Deathroot poisons you need. Some players may have loved min-maxing every piece of equipment for each party member in Origins, but I didn't miss anything by just concentrating on their weapons and accessories. I was content to discover the specific armor upgrades for companions that are sprinkled around the city, again rewarding the player for exploring.
Not only does Dragon Age II play better, it looks absolutely gorgeous. Gone is the mess of pixels and aura bugs that were the graphics of Origins and in its place is a combination of environments that just sing -- the golden statues of Andraste in the Chantry, the ships docked in Lowtown, the eddies of the Wounded Coast and the dank caves and dungeons all look wonderful. Individual textures may not look amazing under scrutiny, but as a whole each character's face is expressive across a wide range of emotions. If I have a concern, it's that certain dungeons below Kirkwall are visited two or three times with only small variations. "Oh, we're in that place again. Glad somebody restocked the chests with treasure."
The advancements in RPG mechanics would be enough to set it apart, but the real achievement of Dragon Age II is in the story-telling. I could point out the improved combat and graphics till there's blood covering my face, but BioWare is one of the few companies that uses the advanced computing power available to modern game designers to let you actually play a role. As Hawke, you care about your mother and family, you care about your city and the conflicts that threaten to tear it apart. In a game as dense as this, and it will occupy at least fifty hours if you follow every hook, it's a triumph to just complete the story. But if I was proud to become the Champion of Kirkwall, I was more happy to have the tools to tell the story the way I envisioned it.
Bottom Line: A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics and excellent story-telling, Dragon Age II is what videogames are meant to be.
Recommendation: Buy it, steal it, beat up your little brother so you can play it.
5/5
Notice the reference to auto-attack functions that aren't actually in the game. Probably a review build thing. Probably.
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town areas are filled with lots of NPCs, who are described as barely animated, just dumbly standing around
I remember Origins having the same problem, for the most part.
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that one is a bit of a red herring, i think, since it's basically just standard operating procedure for npcs. i'm more concerned about environments feeling "sterile"
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Depends if its PC or not, and apparently it's a problem with the "shipped" versions, the reviewer's may have gotten different ones/ones with it already in.
That said, having watched different bits from DA2 it does seem to look rather cool.
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that one is a bit of a red herring, i think, since it's basically just standard operating procedure for npcs. i'm more concerned about environments feeling "sterile"
Watch this video of the Qunari camp (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INl33bo0Vn8) and feel your fears allay as you marvel at the art design.
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Here is the soundtrack if you are interested:
http://www.mediafire.com/?xnbh8mpsfvohf9s
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Inon Zur did that one, right?
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Yup. It's no surprise they got him to do it.
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Not a big Zur fan. I can't remember who did DA:O (might've been either Jack Wall or Sam Hulick working solo) but I've always been partial to Jeremy Soule. Seems like there's a bit of an industry backlash to him as of late due to his prolific ethic but as a de facto replacement Zur doesn't really hit the same highs Soule does (compare the theme of Fallout 3 to those of Morrowind / Skyrim)
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DA:O was done by Inon Zur, too.
Anyway, I think I'm going to be skipping this one. Nothing I've read about it has excited me or gotten me hyped up for it in any way. Which is a shame because I really enjoyed DA:O, despite its flaws.
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Huh, gotta give him props for the DA:O theme, which I thought was pretty evocative until Leilana sang an embarrassing rendition (or a similar song). Can't remember any other pieces, though.
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the leilana thing was so embarrassing
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Someone put up warning if/when this thread gets spoiler-y. I don't get the game till the 11th so I'm avoiding everything.
:psyduck:
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the leilana thing was so embarrassing
I'm hoping Isabela breaks out a shanty in this one 8-)
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I tell you, no matter how attractive she is, if she breaks out a concertina we're through :P.
Anyway, the reviews seem to be coming in and (in general) people seem to like it, there are some who say it's not "originsey" enough and metacritic is at the moment being flooded by people from the bioware boards who hate it, but the general critical opinion is "good to excellent" something that I am more than happy with.
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G4TV: 3/5 (http://www.g4tv.com/games/xbox-360/64227/Dragon-Age-II/review/) (consoles only)
They seem to have switched things up from DA:O, in that the PC version is getting slightly lower scores than the console version instead of the other way around. I think IGN's score was something like 8.3 or 8.5 for consoles and 7.7 or thereabouts for PC.
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bought it today, will play a bit tonight, will let everyone know what i think
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Yeah, I much prefer Jeremy Soule over Inon Zur on any project that is meant to evoke exploration or real sense of space. He's just better at establishing a rhythm without beating you over the head with it. That lighter touch makes his stuff feel a lot more airy and atmospheric without just resorting to what is damn near white noise. Inon Zur isn't dogshit or anything, but over the years I've come to the conclusion that he makes the most sense for a project like Dawn of War. His most bombastic stuff is big loud and dumb... Just like Warhammer.
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Oh, and pretty cool thing - the PC version also works on Macs.
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Save game editor? (http://mod.gib.me/dragonage2/savegen-1.0.zip)
(http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/7318/sm6dc.jpg)
Deep thoughts
Man that looks like a free-to-play MMO.
(http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/5781/dragonage220110308147u0.jpg)
An apostate blood mage must have fused them together
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Enchantment!
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Ah, Jeremy Soule. Why does November have to be so far away?
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That is odd, PCgamer (the one in the UK) gave it quite a good score, saying that is was a good PC game as well as a good story. Still I guess I will find out on either Thursday or Friday.
Must admit, so many of the people are complaining about the combat being "too fast" or "not tactical enough" and its giving me a headache.
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So far what I and a lot of other people seem to be experiencing are flashbacks to the Orc Cave and Thief Mansion portions of Neverwinter Nights 2 (easily the worst parts of that game) - enemies come in waves (weak -> stronger -> bosses) and materialize out of thin air in weird places. The entire game apparently follows this format. I haven't gotten to the portion with rogue enemies, but everything I've heard points to it being a total nightmare, with unavoidable massive-damage backstabs ala the Thief Mansion.
I think a large part of it has to do with the level design, which has seen a really breathtaking regression from DA:O. Levels haven't been this small since Jade Empire, and there's not a lot of wiggle room to pull off anything other than *enter corridor, ambush from both sides* or *enter circle pit, ambush from all sides*
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Thats fine then, if you dislike that, you dislike it and god knows I don't mind it. I have no objection to criticism of this game, just a bit of a chip on my shoulder about the sheer amount of PC gamers who complain about how combat [not the enemies you fight, but combat in general] is now "dumbed down" for "console kiddies". Heck, I wouldn't even mind those criticisms if people didn't use those terms so much that it hurts.
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They seem to have switched things up from DA:O, in that the PC version is getting slightly lower scores than the console version instead of the other way around. I think IGN's score was something like 8.3 or 8.5 for consoles and 7.7 or thereabouts for PC.
Both PC and consoles scored 8.5 from IGN.
http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/objects/080/080342.html
http://uk.pc.ign.com/objects/061/061075.html
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dumbed down controlls for console kiddies
Usually the people who say it like they mean it are just PC fanboys. Console controllers present a much more streamlined and efficient way of executing in game commands.
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It would be fine if you could use controllers on the PC, but you can't.
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Oh well, market share (http://www.sciforums.com/images/smilies/shrug.gif)
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dumbed down controlls for console kiddies
Usually the people who say it like they mean it are just PC fanboys. Console controllers present a much more streamlined and efficient way of executing in game commands.
That's... debatable till we all turn blue in the face and die of angry fanboyism (asphyxiation).
That said 3rd person games generally benefit from gamepads like Arkham Asylum and Prototype. That's why I have a pad for my PC. You can use a pad for the PC version supposedly, but it won't work well, the PC version uses a completely different targeting system optimised for keyboard + mouse.
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I like the PC and my consoles, I just can't understand why people seem to have such a massive stick up their backside about what set of sparks and wiring you enjoy most.
Anyway, I am looking forward to the game, and whilst I know not everyone will enjoy it, I am glad that here at least we all seem to be able to have a civil conversation without resorting to murderous outrage and labryinthine conspiracy theories about EA.
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That's... debatable till we all turn blue in the face and die of angry fanboyism (asphyxiation).
I find it particularly suspect given that I felt compelled to adopt the supremely awkward claw method of holding a gamepad ages ago just to get around the whole "Can't properly use more than 2 buttons AND a stick per hand" problem. I do think pads are superior for many genres thanks to the sensitivity of sticks and the general virtue of being ad-hoc devices but at the same time there are also genres that I simply cannot imagine playing properly with a gamepad. In WoW, for example, I had in excess of 50+ commands mapped when you factored in alt, ctrl & spacebar modifiers and my 6 button mouse. Likewise Halo Wars featured some great problem solving on the part of the developers but at the same time the control setup can hardly be said to match what top Starcraft players are doing in terms of APM with a mouse & keyboard combo.
I guess what I'm tryiing to say here is don't be that guy with the blanket judgements on interfaces since it just kinda makes you sound like a tool.
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Internet dissonance!
Alright, I've only been into the game for about 9 to 10 hours. I just got past the point in which you *spoiler* from the *spoiler*.
I've been thinking back to see if I would've done anything that would have the game confused as to what the gender of my character is. The only thing I can *think* of is using the mirror in the black emporium (think that's the name) ... the mirror that allows you to change your appearance.
But anyway, I began noticing this as soon as I ran into Fenris, at least 3 or 4 times during his dialogue chain, I had an option to flirt with him, keeping in mind that my character is male.
Also, as previously stated, I just finished the quest to *spoiler . After doing so, I went to talk to Anders at his home base, and he was straight up hitting on me. When I shot him down, I gained 10 rivalry points with him, and now he's pretty much perma-pissed at me.
And, I have not had even ONE opportunity as of yet to flirt with a member of the opposite sex. Granted, the only ones I've got are Bethany (which doesn't/shouldn't count), Merril and Aveline. But out of the two that are not related, I've not had the option to flirt with either.
Now, this brings up a cotroversial topic, but I am not here to say that same-sex romance shouldn't be allowed for those who want to chase it ... but I most certainly do NOT want to ... and the game seems to be going out of it's way to practically force me into a same-sex relationship.
It comes off feeling somewhat on purpose ... alot like 'hey look! you can do same sex relationships! now! ... look! ... no seriously! we mean it! ... here, just incase you didn't believe us, here is ANOTHER opportunity!'
So yeah, I get it, it's possible, but perhaps you shouldn't make it feel like it's being shoved down my throat? ... figuratively speaking of course.
Flashbacks!
(http://i.imgur.com/IeUpu.png)
Meanwhile, back at the bioboards... I'm pretty sure David Gaider is taking the piss at this point:
(http://i.imgur.com/pvnfl.png)
(Maria Caliban is one of the more prominent heralds of the 'shipper hivemind)
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update: okay i accidentally spent way more time playing this today than i meant to which is usually a sign that something was going right. the game is actually pretty fun but the environments do feel really, really empty, and i'm already starting to get sick of kirkwall.
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Yeah, I mean look at this:
(http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/2643/f2a99089f71129246eed0b1.jpg)
It goes from pretty good on the left to pretty bad on the right. Like, a different floor texture would be good, even. It's way too empty.
I'm about 8 or 9 hours in and looking back on it, it's really quite noticeable how little dialog there is in this game compared to all other Bio games. I feel like it's stuck halfway between a full-on action game and an action RPG, and not in a good way. In the first 6 hours I talked to Aveline once, outside of quest stuff. That's unusual for Bioware.
Aside from the random teleport-spawning (which really does in your mages), combat gets marginally better as you advance levels and accumulate talents to use between DPS draining with your normal attack.
It's really unclear why they bothered including character stats in the game at all - it railroads you into exclusively pumping two stats associated with your class, because if you don't keep them high (dex+cun for rogues, str+con for fighters, int+will for mages) then you can't use new equipment. There are no exceptions to this. The skill trees, on the other hand, are pretty good.
Varric's the clear frontrunner in terms of the characters, but he doesn't have much competition. 5 years ago Merrill would've been fine with me but as it is I feel like she's nothing more than a less assertive, fantasy version of Tali (with some Aerie thrown in, given that she's the clear archetype being reheated). It is actively irritating me.
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(http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/8562/yd0hl.jpg)
:psyduck:
Distinct racial physiology is an opportunity to explore different standards of beauty
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Heads up, lots of bug reports for Isabela's joining quest. Roll your savegames so you'll have one from before you take it, just in case.
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Hawke looks bored.
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oh yeah, i forgot to mention: the character creator is one of the worst i've ever seen, all the black guys you can make just look like burnt white guys? i tried to make omar from the wire but he just came out like a toasted bruce willis
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I'm starting to think I'm just going to give this one a pass entirely. I've got a backlog of games I want to play anyway.
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Hawke looks bored.
The facial animation in this game is Alpha Protocol-esque (though the VA isn't nearly as good IMO). Varric's is alright, but he's got exaggerated features.
oh yeah, i forgot to mention: the character creator is one of the worst i've ever seen, all the black guys you can make just look like burnt white guys? i tried to make omar from the wire but he just came out like a toasted bruce willis
Remember that Isabela is supposed to be black, too.
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okay, what? it's the same isabela from the first game, isn't it? the one who was very much white?
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Lighting issue. If you pull her model in the editing program, she has brown skin. Still, ain't that brown if ambient lighting makes her white.
They did change her hair between games, I think. But that's probably the most negligible thing they retconned in this game.
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"lighting issue" is really mild
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At first I was really excited about getting this game because it seemed like they were taking a lot of steps in the right direction. Then every piece of footage and every single review I have seen have turned me off of it completely.
How much does this one play like an MMO? Because from what I've read it ranges from slightly to completely.
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I hear this game is a bit backwards and likely shouldn't have been called Dragon Age 2, but more like Dragon Age: Refugee. Help me out here, because I deeply crave some Bioware storytellin' and immersin'.
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According to files (and art!) buried in the game's data folders, DA2 was originally called Dragon Age: Exodus. Why they changed it is anyone's guess. Using the old one would've solved a lot of problems. I'm guessing it has something to do with the ending...
How much does this one play like an MMO? Because from what I've read it ranges from slightly to completely.
Having not played any MMOs, I can't speak to that, but the combat design apparently takes after it, what with the "tanking" and the "DPS" (though to be fair, New Vegas had DPS and it was a pretty sweet game).
"lighting issue" is really mild
There was some controversy around the time the game was first announced when the concept art for Isabela clearly showed her to be a woman of color, which is the first time people got weirded out by the discrepancy. That was compounded when CG promo art gave her clearly caucasian features. I think I posted about it sometime earlier in the thread's history and I believe people got butthurt. Bioware claimed that the company they farmed it out to made a mistake.
DA2's PR situation has been something like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyrM7GxyzGg) for a long time, at least for some. Personally I think everything would have been fine had they put a muzzle on Gaider's Social account.
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But I think we can all probably agree that this feels like the cheapest game Bioware's made. It's weird because of all the aspects of the game there are some pretty advanced ones - the lighting engine is really powerful, and if you jack up the settings you need a really nice rig to run it without consistent framerate drops in the presence of light sources.
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i think it's just a bit of a clusterfuck. i don't see how it can be considered "rushed out the door" or anything, since it's been a couple of years since the first entry. it just feels like a game where wires got crossed almost everywhere across the line – aimless in a lot of ways.
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Well crap now I feel like a moron for preordering it.
I will just have to try it out tonight and see what's up.
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Check it out and see what you think. I wouldn't call the game a miserable failure, but it feels quite off. There are a lot of things that I can see people really enjoying, though.
I don't know, with all the overhauls they made, a production schedule of 2 or so years versus the 5-6 it took to make the first game can be pretty telling.
But yeah, it feels so weird, considering the high standard of polish Bio games are held to. DA:O's environments were often quite gorgeous, yet there has been nothing approaching that in DA2. And it's always kind of presumptuous to believe hype talk, but what the devs have said over the years seems to indicate that a lot of the problematic stuff was in fact deliberately implemented.
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Do you have any more options for the camera than in the demo? I will probably not buy this game ever if I can't scroll. Further. Fucking. Out. I like to see what's going on on the battlefield.
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For the PC, you can zoom out a bit with the mousewheel, but the camera is always locked on your selected character. You can change the camera angle by holding the right mouse button, but I think it reverts if you move your character or issue orders.
Yeah it's kind of a pain.
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This influence system is really the least intuitive one I've ever worked with. It's really weird - Merrill protests selling people into slavery, but her influence only goes down if the people you're selling are mages. It feels haphazard, but then, so does everything.
On the other hand, the more kinetic talents (bull rushes, etc.) do make the combat seem more fun.
Cryptic warning! - - - - - Bring Anders.
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Pretty funny nerd shit from SA
(http://i.imgur.com/aQ9n0.jpg)
Also, quite cogent critique of the game's first three hours, plot-wise (http://scottkenemore.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/dragon-rage-2/).
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man there's a list of problems i have with the game but the framing device actually isn't among them. mostly i miss changing my companions' gear and i miss stats and tactics really mattering.
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I'll give you stats and gear, I guess - for all the lack of stuff in ME2 I think they struck a fairly good balance re:inventory in that game. But that was a refinement of ME1. DA2 is... I don't know how it relates to DA:O. DA2 definitely suffers the most in relation to its predecessor. It's so odd, because aside from the lead designer position, the DA:O team is apparently fully intact into DA2.
Speaking of, a few months ago the DA:O lead wrote a post on his blog (http://blog.brentknowles.com/2010/08/15/bioware-brent-year-10-fall-2008-summer-2009/) all but admitting he was fired for not being particularly enthused with the Mass Effect-y direction the series was being taken.
We were nearing the end of active work on design content for Dragon Age… there was still a lot more bug fixing/polishing/ and fill-content generation ahead but the core plot/writing and level design was finished. My work was rapidly shifting into that of reviewing what the team had put together.
Discussion on Dragon Age 2 began around this time and looking ahead I knew that I wasn’t going to be satisfied with what Dragon Age 2 would be. Party control/tactical combat are huge factors in my enjoyment of a role-playing game as is adopting the role of the hero (i.e., customizing my character). I was fairly certain Dragon Age would transition towards more of a Mass Effect experience, which while enjoyable is not the type of role-playing game I play. Could I be the lead designer on such a title? Certainly… though if I were going to work on a game adopting a set-in-stone protagonist I’d rather work on something lighter, like a shooter. Through a series of circumstances it was decided that with my not wanting to participate on Dragon Age 2 it was time to transition in a new lead to finish the Dragon Age console versions and ramp up for Dragon Age 2. I moved out of an active lead role though I stayed on for several months performing quality assurance and helping with the transition. I completed the game several times during this period and racked up the second or third highest bug totals… so, still busy but doing something quite different.
After this was over and the content locked down I took a sabbatical. I wrote a lot during my several weeks of sabbatical time. One of the stories I wrote — “Digital Rights” — went on to win the Writers of the Future contest (though I wouldn’t learn that until late in 2009). While I enjoyed devoting my time to writing and spending more time with my kids I still had the ‘game design’ itch. When I returned to work I was hoping that there would be a new project lined up for me.
There wasn’t, not really. I did some high level design for a potential new project but a few months later I realized that, given cutbacks and other things that it really seemed unlikely that the project I had been ‘assigned’ to was ever going to materialize. I can’t/won’t go into any other details other than to point to an old entry I made about this and reiterate: “I’m not the same person I was when I started, and BioWare isn’t the same company.” So I quit, giving a couple months notice to finish up my obligations on the new/hypothetical project and then in early September 2009 I left BioWare. I had a great last lunch with many of the designers I had helped train over the years. I definitely miss all the interaction at the office; there’s nothing like a couple hundred uber creative folk running around to stir the imagination but I am very much enjoying my stress reduced life.
But yeah, biggest disappointment is the combat, which really does not deviate from the "three wave" template through the vast majority of the game. At first you can be really into the tactics, but after awhile it just becomes a slog. You just weather the blasts of cannon fodder. It feels a lot like an even more streamlined Jade Empire, in a bad way.
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there's the thing – it made sense to pare down that stuff in mass effect because mass effect is about blasting dudes, making choices and boning space babes. dragon age was like a game that had a bunch of politics that your character didn't really know shit all about and repeatedly found him/herself in the thick of. it was also a game about like that old-school top-down party rpg stuff – working your tanks and your buffs and all those words i hate and don't care about. but the actual meat of it was really fun. making the game more mass effecty has made it lose a lot of its soul, i think.
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The thing about ME1 was that it was a classic example of how a lot of RPG conventions turn vestigial REAL fast when taken out of context. For example, equipment upgrades and levels served a real purpose in games like Dragon Quest or Dungeon Crawl, since the primary skill required in those games is plain old threat assessment. As such items ans experience points operated in large part as a way to gate content until you figure out how to acquire more of them while exposing yourself to a minimum of risk-- a dilemma that frankly, many games aren't particularly interested in presenting anymore. Getting your shit ruined by a werewolf because you tried going to Rimuldar early is way too 1986 for most people. However, that does mean that consequently any level/ability/item gained in a modern RPG that does not directly give players a new option to toy with or fails to reshape a character's primary role is largely meaningless as anything other than a way to give the OCD set a post-game. ME2 figured that out, which is why each class had roughly the same number of active abilities as they ever did in the first game-- if not more-- despite having had far less skill points to play with. I would argue with conviction that it was streamlined rather than dumbed down like a lot of reactionaries whined.
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I got in about 4 hours of the actual game last night before sleep beckoned. So just a few initial impressions:
- The combat is faster and more fun on standard fights lacking origins slog and grind. The bosses from what little I've seen are a mixed bunch. Some are an interesting challenge, others are mobs with higher health and 2 points more damage that simply need to be CC'd out the way until you're ready to deal with them.
- Dialogue so far is fine. Nothing immensely stand out but I seem to but drawn unwittingly to a blunt, sarcastic Hawke. Yet unsure if this is good or bad.
- The art style is excellent when it comes to Kirkwall and the Companions, not so much beyond that. Still the broader colour palette is nice.
- It's hard to say a great deal about the story so far but it does feel rather ME2-ish with its primary interactions being around companion quests. Also either a slow burner or slow starter but I'm liking the illusion of freedom. Do whatever quest you want by whatever means you feel best.
Enjoying it greatly so far. Further updates forthcoming.
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http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2011/03/dragon-age-ii-in-5-seconds/
Man. I still haven't played this game yet and look at the amount of crap I have accumulated for it!
(http://i516.photobucket.com/albums/u330/Dreamcastguy/Dragonage2Stuff.jpg)
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http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2011/03/dragon-age-ii-in-5-seconds/
See, now that makes me nostalgic for the old game. I miss Golden Axe.
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Yeah. Now I want to go play some Golden axe on my Mastersystem.
Or the remake on the PS2.
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Man. I still haven't played this game yet and look at the amount of crap I have accumulated for it!
[IMG]
Doesn't look like you've got the bonus party member. That'll be $10. You got it free if you pre-ordered before the game had any in-depth previews or gameplay vids (expired the day before the game made it to Steam, but that's EA for you.
Did you play the online game? I think that gave you one or two trinkets.
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No the free party member thing is console specific and only shows up on XBox Live. Maybe once I actually have the game running it will show up. I entered the code and stuff.
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So wait, you got the game for more than one platform and you've only got the Exiled Prince on the 360? I'm confused.
But yeah, they went absolutely bugfuck with DLC with this game. EA had DLC set aside to be conditionally released upon the completion of a number of crowd-sourced PR initiatives (twitter and facebook stuff) and even things like items that you could only get if you had something shipped to you from some company somewhere. Superfans were paying $15 to have letter openers shipped to them so that they could get some random item.
'Tis the future of gaming, today.
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When games like Valve are selling their games for 50% off, and selling their Portal 2 bundled for PS3 and Steam together... And making a ton of profit, no, I'm not convinced that it's the future of gaming.
Still, EA is annoying as heck in that way.
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As such items ans experience points operated in large part as a way to gate content until you figure out how to acquire more of them while exposing yourself to a minimum of risk-- a dilemma that frankly, many games aren't particularly interested in presenting anymore. Getting your shit ruined by a werewolf because you tried going to Rimuldar early is way too 1986 for most people. However, that does mean that consequently any level/ability/item gained in a modern RPG that does not directly give players a new option to toy with or fails to reshape a character's primary role is largely meaningless as anything other than a way to give the OCD set a post-game. ME2 figured that out, which is why each class had roughly the same number of active abilities as they ever did in the first game-- if not more-- despite having had far less skill points to play with.
i thought the first dragon age had this down as well. the character development was fairly balanced without being a content gate.
I would argue with conviction that it was streamlined rather than dumbed down like a lot of reactionaries whined.
i don't think you'll get much argument on this forum. but me2 needed streamlining, since a lot of the rpg stuff like loot collecting and having a ton of skill points felt really clunky in the context of a third person shooter. dragon age didn't really get streamlined so much as all the stats stuf now feels irrelevant.
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Yeah, I meant that ME2 was streamlined, not DA2. I got to rambling quite a bit last night because it was late and I was tired. I guess my point is that a lot of attributes and such are actually pretty clunky in many RPGs as well, but due to context people don't really question it.
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Stats serve an important purpose - to differentiate character builds beyond simple skill choice. Sadly DA2 has rendered them essentially meaningless via equipment requirements. You are actively punished for deviating from standard builds.
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In theory they can if you do it right, but in a lot of cases I've found that many games do more or less "punish" you from deviating from an ideal and typically what that "ideal" is boils down to what you can infer the devs think you're supposed to do given that most games keep a fair amount of mechanical information hidden from the players.
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So wait, you got the game for more than one platform and you've only got the Exiled Prince on the 360? I'm confused.
No I got the game for the 360. I already installed the prince thing but haven't actually played the game yet. I don't know if the DLC will actually show up on that list until I have actually played the game once.
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Guys Steve has this game. I watch him play, on account fo he plays all the time now. I just want to say : I would totally bone that dwarf bard guy in the party. That is all.
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(http://img.waffleimages.com/38cfc8f807dd94040eb5547a6a13a159d01c45e0/varric-01-coat-p.jpg)
Eyyyyy
Anyway, weird to think that this might be the first Bio game since NWN1 that I don't finish with my first character. There are just so many niggling things. The impression that I'm getting is that this game really, really needed another year of development time. Someone did an interview with Inon Zur recently where he just came out and said "Dragon Age 2 seemed like a rush job, let me know where I fucked up". The gameplay would be imminently forgivable had the narrative and characters been good, but aside from Varric and Aveline (to an extent) I'm not warming to any of the characters so far, and all I'm missing at this point are Isabela and the Scottish DLC Prince.
The biggest thing is that DA2 seems to always tell and never show, especially in the first two acts. DA:O and ME benefited from a choice of character backgrounds that centered the Warden / PC and gave context to the way they acted. Hawke, on the other hand, is a total cypher. We only catch glimpses of his / her story - The in media res opening is exceedingly problematic from a characterization standpoint even with the "it's a story being told" handwave. When you transition from Act 1 to Act 2, there is literally no sense of time having any real meaning, even though it's a central aspect of the storytelling mechanism. The grief of your family over the events of the prologue is as hollow (more, even) than Fallout 3's father-child dynamic, because you spend literally less than 5 minutes with them before you're asked to become emotionally invested in their bland, trite lives. It keeps coming back up and you think "oh yeah, that thing that happened".
Then you get to Kirkwall, you spend a year working for some ill-defined group, the game resumes at the end of the year, and Hawke has "made a name for himself" despite the fact that you never see and are never really told exactly what you did. There is no sense of progression or accomplishment. You run into people who Hawke apparently knows but all they really say is "Oh hey Hawke I haven't seen you since that last time I saw you you sure are making a name for yourself heh heh have a look at my wares". Add to that a severe lack of direction despite the linearity of the game (you want to get to the Deep Roads apparently but it's never explained exactly why you want to, besides the fact that the plot wouldn't work without it) and everything else that seems half-finished and you have a seriously disorienting game experience. I'm really hoping it'll tighten up in the next acts, but from what I've read (even from pro reviewers operating on the 8-10 scale) the ending is pretty terrible.
There are times where the combat is good, at least! Specifically in Act ! there's a quest in a mine where the cheap respawning doesn't occur (and it's actually challenging!) and there's a beach area fight that's well-laid out and manages to be fun even with the standard "wave" combat template. There have been a few instances of potentially interesting choice & consequence, though I won't know how well they'll follow through until I manage to drag myself to the next act.
And I have to reiterate how aggravating the influence system is. Everything about it. They characterize everything as point gain ("Varric rivalry +5", "Aveline friendship +10") despite the fact that friendship / rivalry is one axis and thus, point gain in one is point loss in the other. It seems actively deceptive to me. Like, just call it what it is - DA:O's influence bar with benefits for low scores. And it's still a shitty system!
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Also hey hey hey guess what
EA included Securom on DA2 while specifically denying doing so (http://vividgamer.com/2011/03/10/ea-fails-to-disclose-securom-in-dragon-age-ii/) despite being under court orders not to do that! lol :D :D :D
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Also one thing that fucking sucks about combat in this game: There is no line of sight for archers. Try to hide behind a wall? They will shoot straight through it. Try to dodge projectiles? Fuck that, dudes use homing arrows.
ALSO protip: If you're still in Act 1 (after the first year in Kirkwall) periodically drop in to the Lowtown bar that Varric is based out of. I've read that a number of people have completely missed Isabela because they didn't go there at the precise right time in Act 1.
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This game seems to actively illustrate how messed up review scores are nowadays. I really do not see how this game has gotten 9's and even a perfect score. The game has problems and from everything I've read it seems to have quite a lot of problems. How much do you think Bioware's reputation is influencing review scores?
And wow, reading the user reviews on metacritic is making me cringe, I will never make that mistake again.
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So glad I hated the demo. If the demo was good and I'd bought it expecting more of the same then I'd be exploding with rage.
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And I have to reiterate how aggravating the influence system is. Everything about it. They characterize everything as point gain ("Varric rivalry +5", "Aveline friendship +10") despite the fact that friendship / rivalry is one axis and thus, point gain in one is point loss in the other. It seems actively deceptive to me. Like, just call it what it is - DA:O's influence bar with benefits for low scores. And it's still a shitty system!
none of the actions in it are intuitive. which you've mentioned before, but i still feel i ought to reiterate. like, okay: merrill in conversation tells me she wants to go with me into the fade, so i take her – and her rivalry goes up? then says we shouldn't parley with demons, so i tell a demon to shove it – and her, uh, her rivalry goes up again? what the fuck even is that. don't tell me one thing and then fucking have another thing entirely happen. i'm so annoyed
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this is the first bioware game where i'm not going to pursue a romance on my first run-through, because my current hawke isn't a gay dude and the women make me want to stab myself in the brain
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hahaha ok act 2 update don't bring merrill into the fade with you even if she asks you to because she's a huge dumb asshole of a character and fuck her forever
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BUT SHE'S SOOOOOO KEWT :psyduck:
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GIGGLESQUEE I WANT TO NOM HER HEAD
Anyway, Gibbed (the save generator hacker dude) found and unlocked a bunch of stuff for character creation - right click and save this and put it... somewhere (http://mod.gib.me/dragonage2/chargenmorphcfg.xml) (ed: Documents\Bioware\Dragon Age 2\packages\core\override, create if it doesn't exist). Includes two editable "iconic" (read: Default) Hawke faces and new hairstyles and the Qunari skin tone.
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(http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/8134/mtvqy.jpg)
Hawwwke... Open your mind to me... Open your miiiind... Open your miiiiiiiiiiiind
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So all the reviews I've read make this sound like a game I want to play rather than the endless tedium I find DA:O to be but the internet nerds keep saying it is the worst game ever made and BioWare is done and should be executed and put in a mass grave I don't know what to believe.
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I think it's mostly that the internet nerds really liked the style and the way old game played, but Bioware changed quite a bit of it. At least that's what I take it to be.
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So all the reviews I've read make this sound like a game I want to play rather than the endless tedium I find DA:O to be but the internet nerds keep saying it is the worst game ever made and BioWare is done and should be executed and put in a mass grave I don't know what to believe.
Get the demo and then play it, and then you might as well buy it, because the demo is essentially the entirety of the game experience..
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Also, I would personally prefer it if you would play the game before you white knight it. I came to my opinions honestly.
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Also, I would personally prefer it if you would play the game before you white knight it. I came to my opinions honestly.
Bullllllllllllllllshiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
I didn't actually like the demo too much, though. The AV Club and Kotaku reviews just made me interested in the plot more than I thought I'd be.
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I didn't actually like the demo too much, though.
Better get your head checked, there is definitely something wrong with you.
In other news, Bioware got caught astroturfing metacritic (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/g3td7/dragon_age_2_conspiracy_highest_rated_metacritic/), but there's a good chance 4chan is doing the same to some extent on the opposite end of the score spectrum, so whatever.
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Man, I just looked at Metacritic for the first time re: DA2.
A 3.7 user rating. On the first page, out of 100 reviews, 23 are 0s.
I detest the gaming community.
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The gaming community is.....horrible. Incredibly bigoted, sexist, idiotic, entitled, homophobic...I don't think I can say many nice things about the gaming community. And the more "hardcore" it gets the worse the people seem to become. I used to identify myself as a gamer and followed parts of the community and it was like dipping into one of the most poisonous environments I've ever been in.
I think the best way of looking at the gaming community in large is that they're whiny children throwing a tantrum. I mean, read some of those reviews, they're tantrums. I would read more of them but they're seriously depressing and are making me embarrassed.
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Somebody pointed me towards a quote of Gaider's defending the bi romances that make so many homophobic kids uncomfortable:
So long as romances of any kind are optional and need to be actively pursued by the player in order to be experienced, they simply don't have a leg to stand on. Advocating that nobody should be able to have content you don't intend to personally use is largely pointless-- outside of a vague notion that such efforts should go towards other things, instead. Personally, it's not a lot of effort to include them. The resources we can devote to a minority of players isn't great, but I imagine to those players it's quite worth it... and I would hope that some folks could be sensitive enough to be happy for those players, at the very least out of the selfish notion that they may one day end up in the minority of some content issue and receive the same consideration if nothing else.
Quaint that he would take up the cause of minorities, considering they're not really worth making overtures to:
We didn't (and won't) do strictly gay romances because a romance is very expensive content-- both from a writing, cinematic and testing perspective. It's one thing to add the extra costs to piggy-back on top of an existing romance plotline (and by this I don't necessarily mean "add gay option to straight romance"... it could just as easily be the reverse) and quite something else to have a romance created from whole cloth.
Meanwhile, back at the Bioboards, the mods seem to have the week off or something (?) and the forums have become even more entertaining (http://social.bioware.com/forum/Dragon-Age-II/Dragon-Age-II-Official-Campaign-Quests-and-Story-SPOILERS/Everyone-is-a-goddamn-blood-mage-6514942-1.html) as a result (spoilers past first post).
(Re: Everybody's a Goddamn Blood Mage)
Maybe its the games way of saying it bites you in the ass, much like backing the Communists did for alot of your more smart and rich Russians.
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everybody is a fucking blood mage, that's a good point
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Seriously I can't think of a single mage aside from Bethany who isn't a blood mage.
Another retcon - in DA:O, demonic possession was something that happened to practitioners of blood magic, which you could only learn via pact with a fade spirit. In DA2, demonic possession apparently happens when someone with latent magical ability, however untrained, enters into a situation of extreme stress or minor physical harm (that or the demonic pact trade in Kirkwall is a buyer's market). There's no ambiguity ala DA:O - mages are literally bombs just waiting to go off and the Templars, who seemed draconian before, are now completely justified in the most draconian anti-magic efforts.
If anything, I'd attribute it to the need to have melee fighters in mage-centric battles - abominations fight hand-to-hand. It also is just kind of indicative of the serious lack of non-combat solutions to a lot of quests.
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like do you realize that after this term ends i'm going to buy and replay da:o probably just to see if i'm being too fond in how i remember it? and to see how the story holds up?
not sure how i feel about the qunari in this game either
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I would advise looking up a few mods first - The Fade portion of the Circle Tower mission is fun once, but a slog on replay. There are mods to remove things like that. You'll probably have fun, until you get to the Deep Roads. Errybody hates the Deep Roads.
If you're hoping to maybe shake DA2 up with a different save import from DA:O, you probably shouldn't bother - People have compared notes and apparently many of the major DA:O decisions (character deaths, who gets crowned ruler of Ferelden, etc.) are entirely ignored, not even in a "they don't mention it" way, either. There are apparently aspects of the storyline that are canon no matter what you actually did.
Speaking of major decisions, will there be any reason to revisit this game, should one finish it? I'm mopping up all the missions in Act 1 and I feel like there's probably nothing I haven't seen that will be revealed in a second playthrough. I feel like Bio may have taken a look at replay statistics and decided it wasn't worth the bother.
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I liked the Deep Roads. Just sayin'.
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I would advise looking up a few mods first - The Fade portion of the Circle Tower mission is fun once, but a slog on replay. There are mods to remove things like that. You'll probably have fun, until you get to the Deep Roads. Errybody hates the Deep Roads.
~console gaming~
If you're hoping to maybe shake DA2 up with a different save import from DA:O, you probably shouldn't bother - People have compared notes and apparently many of the major DA:O decisions (character deaths, who gets crowned ruler of Ferelden, etc.) are entirely ignored, not even in a "they don't mention it" way, either. There are apparently aspects of the storyline that are canon no matter what you actually did.
dude, dish. most of what i've heard of ferelden is like what happened to me in the game (crowned alastair, lived, was a mage). what gets ignored
Speaking of major decisions, will there be any reason to revisit this game, should one finish it? I'm mopping up all the missions in Act 1 and I feel like there's probably nothing I haven't seen that will be revealed in a second playthrough. I feel like Bio may have taken a look at replay statistics and decided it wasn't worth the bother.
act 2 is where like decision making comes to bear – you face down a bunch of decisions you made in the first act. and act 2's decisions are much harder to make, too. the structure of the game really strongly resembles mass effect 2, in that the second act presents you with all your companion quests basically in a big chunk. and it's actually where the best parts of the game's storytelling come through.
but i dunno. revisiting the game means having to maneuver the fucking stupid influence system again and i'm not sure if i'll have the patience for that.
where's bryan been in this thread. paging bryan, this thread
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Yeah, where the fuck is bryan?
~console gaming~
Bummer! If you don't want to go out, I'm pretty sure DA:O is available on-demand via XBL.
dude, dish. most of what i've heard of ferelden is like what happened to me in the game (crowned alastair, lived, was a mage). what gets ignored
In that case you should be okay, but yeah, if you choose to sac yourself like I did it's retconned out (the Warden is never dead, and I don't think it's ever mentioned but I would not be surprised if you always end up impregnating Morrigan), various CNPCs from both DA:O and Awakenings (Anders, natch, but also Leilana, Alistair, Zevran) who could have been killed but weren't. I'll have to dig up the rest, but it's unclear at this point whether it's bugged flags/states (happened quite a bit with New Vegas) or things they never accounted for.
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they're selling DA:O and :A as a package deal now so i might try & snag that
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Okay so wow quite a bit of hate goin on here (or at least some undertones of animosity)
I find it odd to have disliked some of the changes made to Mass Effect 2 and then completely do a face-heel turn on the same sort of drastic changes made to Dragon Age II in comparison to Origins. It does seem a bit silly, but hey lemme try and work this out onto this thread.
I’m just going to put it out there; I love this game to bits, and was eventually bored shitless by the combat in Origins to the point where I never managed to get to play Awakening. I’m not sure what brought this about, because I was pretty into both Neverwinter Nights games, etc. But I found myself really enjoying the changes they made to Dragon Age II, and while I do understand some of the cons that other fans of Origins are pointing out, I’m confused by some others.
Some of the points I’ve noticed from some of my friends include giving Hawke a voice, over-simplifying the inventory system, and so on leading up to the argument that the ‘role-playing’ idea is diminished in comparison to the first game. For example, I can certainly get what people are saying when Hawke isn’t their own character in comparison to Origins, it’s Bioware’s character – but that doesn’t necessarily mean playing as Hawke ‘isn’t role-playing’.
The combat, I think, is what is keeping me playing this game. Despite yes, there is tedium to the ho-hum send-shit-in-waves until they run out of peons routine, the underlying system is just so much… faster than the combat in Origins, especially the Rogue class. Dual-wield combat is just so dynamic from the get-go, in comparison to what it was in the first game. And hey, look, bows and arrows actually mean something.
I suppose in hindsight a lot of the mechanics in Origins are still inherent in Dragon Age II, particularly in the combat. In my opinion, it’s just that there’s a certain element of “hands-free” approach, where Backstab is a skill that automatically puts you behind the enemy rather than a latent thing that just happened when you forcibly moved your character behind them, and other sorts of things. But I don’t see anything wrong with that in particular. There’s such an ease to the spatial element in Rogue combat that makes everything faster, and I think that’s what I like over how it played in Origins.
It also comes down to the fact that I didn’t have the patience for the management of my characters in Origins aside from my own. Despite really loving the characters in my party and everything they had to say to each other, when it came down to leveling up and assigning the right points to the right skills, I eventually stopped giving a shit and auto-levelled everyone save for my own character I created. It felt like I had to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the library of options available for each class. The reason why I’m probably manually assigning points to stats in Dragon Age II as opposed to automatically doing everything (or more accurately, actually relishing the task rather than dreading it) is because there are some easy commonalities in the skill trees, understandings I can apply to all the characters of the same class, and specializations become only a fraction of what I have to know.
For lack of a better word, I thought the gameplay in Origins was fucking slow and plodding. Visually, it didn’t feel like there was a connection between what was being animated and the numbers in the actual attacks. There’s just more action in it, and while I do appreciate the purpose of Origins stylistically was to be a throwback to older RPG systems, I think I got over that sort of thing by the time I played RPGs like Mass Effect. Same goes for the voice-acting: I think once I got into the idea of the character having a voice via dialogue wheel, I never went back. Even if I loved the Neverwinter Nights series and everything about KotOR, it felt odd playing as Shepard, and then going back to my protagonist in Dragon Age who was the only mute in the whole world and communicated via a menu on the screen. I argue that it’s a different kind of role-playing, where you’re still immersing yourself into a role that might not be your own, but it’s still a role.
Dragon Age II is a huge departure from Origins. That’s basically the gist I get of the negativity from the fanbase. There were big changes, big ones that cater for a different kind of RPG gamer. But hey, that’s cool. People got different tastes. But personally I don’t appreciate the part of the community that cries out for blood when it knows about all these changes and still refuse to let it go after a year or two.
And I remember reading this (http://www.hookedgamers.com/editorials/2011/03/02/dragon_age_ii_the_decline_of_the_classic_rpg.html) article and that just got me annoyed. Bioware changed the format of a ‘classic RPG’. God forbid they try to make changes to one of their IPs to cater for a different group after 12 years since Baldur’s Gate.
And button mashing and lack of decent pause-play combat? What a load of bullshit. On the PC version anyway. Which is, so I’m told, the only platform to play a cRPG on.
I digress. I don’t think the game is perfect: it’s not hard to see that environments are copy-pasted and recolored in different spots in an excuse for visual splendor. The characters are a far cry from the dynamics in Origins and Awakening. There have been changes to a few returning supporting characters that I think were put in hastily and without reason. And the Kirkwall period of “get 50 sovereigns to go to expedition” is quite obviously nothing more than a huge wad of padding and one big goddamn fetch quest. While I think the dialogue wheel and voice acting for Hawke is something I much prefer to the silent words spoken by the Grey Warden, the writing doesn’t have the same sort of zing to it. And almost everything picked up in barrels, chests, and boxes is useless crap to be sold, even the rarest of weapons and items unusable by Hawke. So yes, this game is chock-a-block full of issues.
But I think it’s far from the shitstain that the butthurt part of the fanbase are making it out to be.
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I think the fact that you could pause the game and use "tactics", if you wanted to, does nothing to ameliorate the stink of 99% of the combat in a 30-something hour game almost entirely devoted to combat being mechanically indistinguishable from any other fight. After 10 or so hours of that one fight, you just want to get through the "trash mobs", or at least not have to see so, so many waves of cannon fodder beamed down in inexplicable places (some areas allow for dozens of rope-rappelling animations, some enemies pop out of the ground, but a good majority seem to materialize ala people going through doors in Oblivion).
I don't know how exactly you would seriously use tactics in DA2. The system they created is much slower than the combat and what's more, tactics are ostensibly about smart management of limited resources and skill expenditures, where there isn't much of either in DA2 combat. Okay, so I'm a rogue character and I've got Death Mark, which has a cooldown time that puts it roughly at one use per combat incident. For a fight in that 99% of standard mob wave fights, what is the "smart" usage of that skill? What do I lose from using it on the tough grunt in the first wave of tough grunt + 3 glass fighters + 3 glass archers? Do I put myself at a disadvantage when the second and third waves of tough grunt + 3 glass fighters + 3 glass archers comes around? Should I hold off and wait for a situation where I "need" it, which barely ever comes? No, nearly every fight can be won with a basic set of tactics that you hash out pretty early, so variations are more just for giggles than anything else.
I don't really have a great love for Origins' design and I don't really judge the sequel as a "step down" at this point. I just think Dragon Age 2 is a piss-poor game in nearly every respect, on its own terms. It is more tedious than DA:O ever was. Everything about it is either repetitive or unintuitive.
Speaking of which, I started getting into Merrill's convos / quest in earnest and man Johnny, you weren't kidding. Being nice only gets you rivalry points with this character. I have no idea how to make her my friend.
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it's fucking insane! you do what she wants and she gets mad at you. you say "fuck it" and please the rest of your party and she gets mad at you. there's no pleasing her!
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On that note, anyone who went through the Dalish Elf Origins will know what they did to Merril as a character. The writers turned a stalwart, even if somewhat bland, peripheral character into a ditzy petulant supporting one for the sake of the character dynamics.
I wasn't happy about that at all.
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I don't think it's ever mentioned but I would not be surprised if you always end up impregnating Morrigan
So they don't take into account that you could play through DA:O as a woman?
What happens to that plot element if you are a chick? I'm not going to bother to play through the entire game again to get to know, so did anyone play that far as a woman?
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Man I started playing this a bit.
Like What the HELL is up with random ass side quests? Like I clicked through all my quests and I found mention of a bottle of wine. So I give it to an elf for 50 silver. But I don't remember how I got the wine and there was no conversation with anyone before I just randomly give it to someone who I never met before. There is just so little meat to the gameplay there. I don't think the elf who I gave the wine bottle to even had a proper name. Like it's fine to have fetch quests and find NPCs that will buy things from you that you randomly find in your adventure. But they seem to skipped the entire step of the player finding this quest for themselves!
I mean consider the Nuka-cola Quantum quest in Fallout 3. Like that was basically the same kind of quest but the player actually has to find and talk to the NPC before they can start the quest. And the conversation with the insane lady was half the fun of the quest! You know RPG STUFF!
I was kinda excited that they ripped off the Baldur's Gate Storyline of having to get a certain amount of gold together for a quest but I am kinda weirded out how everyone seems to know you already. Like you don't get to meet people and have your first interactions with them. The woman who sells potions already knows you. The guy who sells poisons already knows you. Their opinions of you are already formed.
Also the game never explains how to use your dog. It's a sustained spell that you use to summon it. But the game never tells you that. A small complaint but it's another annoyance.
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also i should say that unlike john i'm actually enjoying a lot of the game, but i think it pales greatly in comparison to its predecessor.
look at the deep roads in this game. the first game they were a bit of a grind but the sense of scale and differentiation between thaigs made the sequence somewhat worthwhile, as did the fairly spectacular final dungeon. but in this game the deep roads are by comparison pretty unimpressive – it lacks the sense of enormous scale that made crossing the bridge to the dead trenches so awesome.
or look at how, as john points out, the tactics have become seriously neutered. the first game basically put you right in the thick of any given battle and told you "deal with this, right now." and you had to pause and get your bearings and strategize. that meant carefully choosing your party and coming up with a set of tactics that worked for you and worrying yourself about positioning and assessing threat priorities and, basically, actually thinking about stuff. in DAII you mostly just pretend you're in streets of rage for five minutes and occasionally mash the "magics!" button (or the backstab button or whatever). i find myself marking baddies for death a lot, personally, but that doesn't mean the combat's deliberate, it means mostly that i want it to be over faster since i know i'm just going to be hammering the A button for four minutes otherwise. i like that they made the combat look a lot more dynamic and natural, but i don't think they had to completely neuter everything that made the first game's combat interesting to do so.
i guess if you find the first game's combat boring, okay, whatever. but it was a thing you had to learn and get used to, and that in itself was rewarding. how do you master combat in this game? become an expert at timing your "magics!" button presses?
i mean – i guess the whole thing about this game is that it doesn't ask you to think nearly as much. it doesn't ask you to consider routes through any area since all the areas are literally just the same thing over and over again and run you down a totally linear pathway anyhow. it doesn't ask you to consider anything about your characters' stats, strengths, and weaknesses, just whether or not you can equip certain gear (and doesn't ask you to consider party gear, either, since the few things you can equip them with outside of weaponry make such a piddling difference). it doesn't ask you to consider how you approach battles since all battles are pretty much the same in terms of strategy.
and the result is that it plays closer to jade empire, which is mystifying because that game had a lukewarm reception at best and the ideas that they've ported to DAII (specifically the way combat works) are like the ideas that generally panned out the worst in that game. i can't figure out why they've made a european-setting jade empire rather than a sequel to dragon age, mostly. i don't think it's a bad game, necessarily (since i'm playing it, and having fun, and looking forward to playing it more), and i don't think i dislike it, but i am disappointed, and i think it's ridiculous to suggest that finding aspects of a game disappointing is instantly equatable to calling it a shitstain.
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Except that's what the gaming community is literally doing?
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was rewarding. how do you master combat in this game? become an expert at timing your "magics!" button presses?
The only thing you can master is switching between characters to get max damage via status effects of different attacks. That is the only strategy involved really.
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Except that's what the gaming community is literally doing?
not in this thread??? in fact mostly what i've read is backlash against people who have problems with the game. that's like way more widespread.
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I don't know dude is it even really possible to honestly dislike things about Bioware games?
I don't think it's ever mentioned but I would not be surprised if you always end up impregnating Morrigan
So they don't take into account that you could play through DA:O as a woman?
What happens to that plot element if you are a chick? I'm not going to bother to play through the entire game again to get to know, so did anyone play that far as a woman?
You can also peer pressure Alistair into fucking Morrigan.
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John, can you stop pretending we're the bioware social forums and stop being as much of a dick for a bit?
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John, can you stop pretending we're the bioware social forums and stop being as much of a dick for a bit?
If someone's feelings are hurt by my patent dislike of this game, prepped by dreadful previews and then validated by extensive gameplay / design experience, that's not really my problem? And I'm going to respond to challenges toward my criticism from people who haven't even played the game with dismissal, because that's what you do when you're presented with uninformed opinions. If you want to tell me I'm wrong, go ahead. I'd even welcome a reason why I'm wrong beyond "The internet doesn't like this game". But there's no good reason why I should censor myself.
This thread is tilting, as all threads of its kind do, towards a "entertainment is about fun and opinions are arbitrary" handwave, so perhaps someone should just pull the trigger on that. It's either that or "if you didn't like the game why did you buy it", which, if those are your two options, there's really no way to critically appraise anything a geek enjoys.
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John, there has been one or two comments concerning the quality of the game other than you and JC and you accused BK, who just said what he felt like the complaints surrounding it sounded like "change is bad" (which to be fair, in the gaming community is not an uncommon problem), of "White Knighting."
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I wasn't referring to BK with that post, I was referring to Ozy, because that's what he's been doing in this thread. It's sort of annoying when a litany of flaws in DA2 is met with "there's a conspiracy against Bioware!", because it is, in the real sense of the word, an ad hominem attack - It's a way of invalidating criticism without really addressing it. It's not really borne out of any particular fondness for the game itself or belief in its quality, it's based from a love of Bioware (and a fondness for forum sport). It's eternally irritating to me that geek culture is stuck in this fucking all-or-nothing quagmire, where the only true and sincere way to look at a piece of art or media is as either entirely perfect or entirely execrable. So when I criticise the characterization or the romance system in Mass Effect 2 it must be because I hate Mass Effect 2 and Bioware, despite the fact that I have consistently praised the game's efficient character and inventory design (which, humorously enough, vast swaths of the internet disliked such that we'll probably see attempts to fix what isn't broken in ME3).
I was not looking forward to this game, that much is true. Sometimes what you expect to happen, happens. DA2 confirmed all the fears I had about it. It isn't a vendetta or a conspiracy between me and the internet. I think David Gaider is a hack but I was willing to let DA2 be great because I've been wrong before! Sadly DA2 is not great. It isn't even all that good. Sometimes what you dread turns out to be great. This was not one of those times.
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john do you actually hate DAII? so far i think like the worst thing i can say about it is that it is a stumbling series of mishaps that still turns out to be fairly interesting story-wise, relatively fun to play, and compelling enough to keep going. it's like a pot roast that you left in the oven at 250˚ for two extra hours without even realizing it and so when you pull it out it's kind of overly tender and its juices have made it go from moist to straight-up damp but it's tasty enough and the leftovers you can just chop up into hash so you eat it anyways and just resolve to do better next time
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I find it almost entirely devoid of anything I'd call "great". It even lacks Bioware's greatest strength (IMO), which is an effective sense of pace. I'd compare it more to a green curry I tried to make recently - I slapped all the ingredients together haphazardly and only had coconut cream, not coconut milk. Everything (except the chicken) came out stiff and undercooked and the lack of coconut oil to hold the sauce together led to its evaporation into a slightly spicy, greasy oil.
So DA2 was a poorly planned concoction of undercooked elements that failed to come together in a coherent or satisfying way. All that was left was sadness.
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I guess I was going to post something about how people wanted one game but got a completely different one, and so their expectations of what the Dragon Age standard was, weren't met, etc.
But I think we've probably been over that a few times in this thread already >:
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For giggles, here is semi-infamous AV Club commenter ZODIAC MOTHERFUCKER's review of the game:
HORSESHIT. THIS GAME IS A STRAIGHTUP DISAPPOINTMENT ESPECIALLY AFTER THE ALLENCOMPASSING OWNAGE OF MASS EFFECT 2 AND IM GONNA BREAK DOWN WHY BUT FIRST LET ME JUST SAY THAT I AM A HUGE FUCKING FAN OF DRAGON AGE ORIGINS I PLAYED THROUGH THAT SHIT FOUR TIMES. ALSO I DONT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE GAMEPLAY IN THIS GAME BECAUSE IM AN XBOX MAN SO ALL THAT PC WHINING DONT MEAN A FUCK TO ME. SO HERE ARE MY BIGGEST ISSUES
1. REUSED ENVIRONMENTS. ITS 20FUCKING11 AND THERE IS NO FUCKING EXCUSE FOR USING THE SAME FUCKING LAYOUT FOR SEVEN DIFFERENT MANSIONS. BUT JUST AS BAD IS SENDING ME BACK TO THE WOUNDED COAST FOR THE SIXTEENTH FUCKING TIME TO KILL SOME BANDITS. LIKE WHY NOT THE MOUNTAINS OR THE DEEPROADS OR AN ISLAND OFF THE COAST OR STARKHAVEN OR THE FADE OR MAYBE A JOG BACK TO FERELDEN? NOPE BACK TO THE FUCKING WOUNDED COAST. AGAIN. SERIOUSLY AFTER A WEEK OF PLAYING I KNOW THE FUCKING WOUNDED COAST BETTER THAN I KNOW MY APARTMENT BUILDING. ID SAY THERE ARE LITERALLY EIGHTY PERCENT FEWER LOCATIONS THAN IN ORIGINS AND THATS EVEN BEFORE THE DLC. TOTAL RUSHJOB BULLSHIT WHICH BRINGS ME TO NUMBER TWO
2. YOU BASICALLY NEVER LEAVE THE FUCKING CITY. AND DONT GIVE ME THIS BULLSHIT ABOUT STORYTELLING WHATEVER BECAUSE WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO IT ITD BE LIKE IF DRAGON AGE ORIGINS NEVER LEFT DENERIM. NO REASON THEY COULDNT HAVE MADE KIRKWALL A MORE VARIED AND EXPANSIVE PLACE WITH NUMEROUS LOCALES INSTEAD OF SENDING ME TO THE SAME FUCKING FOUR SECTIONS OF TOWN EVERY SINGLE QUEST. HEY HAWKE GO TO LOWTOWN. HEY HAWKE THEYRE IN DARKTOWN. HEY HAWKE THEY WENT TO THE GALLOWS. HEY HAWKE YOU JUST MISSED THEM THEY RAN OFF TO THE WOUNDED COAST. BIG FUCKING SURPRISE. AND WHAT THE FUCK DOESNT THE CHAMPION OF KIRKWALL EVER HAVE BUSINESS ELSEWHERE? ME I AINT THE CHAMPION OF SHIT BUT I STILL MANAGE TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF DETROIT ONCE IN AWHILE BUT APPARENTLY OUR BIG HARD FUCKING HERO HAWKE DESPITE HIS FABULOUS FUCKING WEALTH IS HAPPY STARING AT THE SAME FUCKING BRICKS FOR SEVEN YEARS STRAIGHT
3. THE CHARACTERS BLOW. ASIDE FROM VARRIC AND BETHANY I DIDNT GIVE A GOOD FUCK ABOUT ANY OF THESE PEOPLE. COMPARED TO ALISTAIR DUNCAN STEN LOGHAIN LELIANA AND MORRIGAN THIS IS ONE WEAK FUCKING CREW. AND MUCH LIKE AWAKENINGS THEY DECIDE TO BRING BACK ONE OF THE WACKEST MEMBERS OF YOUR POSSE FROM THE PREVIOUS GAME. SERIOUSLY FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING CAT ANDERS. AND STOP FUCKING HITTING ON ME YOU SKEEVY MOTHERFUCKER
4. STORY IS HALFASSED. SPOILERS AHEAD: ALL THIS AWESOME SETUP WITH THE QUNARI THAT FEELS LIKE A DIPLOMATIC TIMEBOMB AND ITS ALL FOR SHIT. FLEMETH SENDING YOU ON A QUEST THAT COMES TO NOTHING. AND YEAH A CLIFFHANGER ENDING? THIS IS HALF A FUCKING GAME AT BEST
5. FIRST DAY DLC. NO FUCKING EXCUSE FOR THIS EVER AND EVEN THE FANBOYS CANT DENY THAT. GREAT BIG CASHGRAB FUCK YOU TO THE FANS
6. BULLSHIT SIDEQUESTS. WHAT THE FUCK I FIND SOMEBODYS MISSING URN AND I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE TO FIND WHO IT BELONGS TO AND THEY GIVE MY A PALTRY FIFTY FUCKING DOLLARS AND THATS A QUEST? WHAT THE FUCK? AND WHATS WITH ALL THE JUNK IM COLLECTING ANYWAY? WHY THE FUCK IS THE WEALTHY CHAMPION OF A CITY SORTING THROUGH PEOPLES FUCKING GARBAGE PICKING OUT MOTH EATEN SCARVES THAT ARE WORTH ALL OF SEVEN CENTS? FUCK I MEAN IT AINT LIKE ELDER SCROLLS WHERE THAT KIND OF BULLSHIT IS JUST LAYING AROUND EVERYWHERE THERE ARE ACTUAL TREASURE CHESTS FILLED WITH BROKEN SWORDS AND TORN TROUSERS THAT CLOG UP MY INVENTORY AND ARE COMPLETELY USELESS. JUST A REALLY FUCKING WEIRD MECHANIC
BOTTOM LINE THEY SHOULDVE JUST CALLED THIS SHIT DRAGON AGE KIRKWALL AND RELEASED IT FOR $39.99 AS A KIND OF PRECURSOR TO AN EPIC ALLTIME AWESOME FULLBLOWN INSTALLMENT IN THE DRAGON AGE SERIES. INSTEAD THIS SHIT FEELS LIKE THAT DIRECT TO VIDEO ROADHOUSE SEQUEL THAT HAD WILL PATTON INSTEAD OF SWAYZE. LOST A LOT OF FAITH IN BIOWARE WITH THIS
"No homo"s aside, he probably captures most of the solid arguments against DA2's design.
I think the single biggest thing they could've done with DA2 to make it better would have been to create a number of substantial sidequests ala ME2. As it is the entire first 12-15 hours of the game (even companion quests!) consists entirely of the tiny little quests that you find within the city hubs of ME2 - Lots of investigating whether or not the presidium lakes have fish.
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I guess I was going to post something about how people wanted one game but got a completely different one, and so their expectations of what the Dragon Age standard was, weren't met, etc.
But I think we've probably been over that a few times in this thread already >:
My problem with this summary is that it neatly sidesteps the question of whether this other game is any good. Personally, I don't really think it is so far, even if some bits are fairly charming-- as has been pointed out repeatedly now, there's simply too much Jade Empire in here. Johnny's Streets of Rage comparison seems apt, and as a former WoW player I'd say the PC controls at least give things a definite MMO feel. As a former hardcore raider, you'd think I'd be OK with that, but so far I am not. The problem is really quite simple: At its best, WoW is a game that is ultimately about teamwork, communication, repetition, failure and eventually success. You encounter a scripted series of events mingled with semi-random effects and you learn what things do and put your heads together to compensate for what your group can and cannot do in the encounter. There are consequences for fuck ups, dying is considered routine, and eventually you learn. Unfortunately, Dragon Age 2 copped the mechanics but not the context, which is basically the exact opposite of what any game designer should have learned from Blizzard's money making machine. So in DA2 you certainly can put some thought into how you use your cooldowns and such, but ultimately there is precious little reward or reason why you should do so. The game doesn't even really go out of its way to acknowledge how awesome you're doing Tony Hawk or Bulletstorm style, so why not just mash like crazy? I don't mean to come across as the sort of guy who thinks every game needs to be ball bustingly hard or anything, but at the same time I'd like to feel like my decisions count for something.
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Ok, that ZMF review was super-difficult to read.
Is the game seriously almost entirely urban? I've heard that a lot of the game is set inside a city, how much of that is true?
And honestly, I thought the characters in Origins were unbelievably bland, how are the sequel's managing to live up to that?
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It isn't entirely urban. There are three hub areas within the city - hightown, lowtown, darktown, plus the Chantry stronghold called the Gallows.
There are two areas outside the city - Sundermount, and the Wounded Coast. I think there are also two stock "mountain" and "coast" area layouts that are used for various other things. There is also a portion of the game that takes place within the Deep Roads.
As you've probably read innumerable times, the majority of interior areas are recycled.
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It isn't entirely urban. There are three hub areas within the city - hightown, lowtown, darktown,
Deliberately?
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Did they deliberately use those names? Yes, yes they did.
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Also I gotta say that Aveline is really growing on me. At first I thought she was neglected, writing-wise, but it's starting to look a lot like understatement. It's nice to have a strong female character who's both un-romanceable and not a blowhard hiding deep insecurities.
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cosigned – best characters are probably varric, aveline, bethany, in that order. isabela is actually not entirely terrible but i honestly can't stand to look at her totally silly design so like i can't have her near me at any time. makes miranda look tasteful
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My problem with this summary is that it neatly sidesteps the question of whether this other game is any good.
It's fair game to point out flaws in comparison to similar mechanics, but I find it difficult to weight all its flaws and strengths to summate everything into an evaluation of whether the game is "any good" or "pretty bad" and so on. I suppose that's why half of the people I know really love Dragon Age II and the other half loath it (in comparison to Origins, at the very least), to put it in simplified terms.
I have to admit my personal preference for II's changes came out of the fact that I was disappointed by what I was playing in Origins, which might just be an indicator of the sort of gamer I am, but perhaps I've weighted the flaws and strengths differently to determine how good or bad the game was as a whole. It's one of the only reasons I can think of that people could be so divided about this game.
Also, out of curiosity, are you playing a console version or something (or a PC version with auto-attack off, idk I haven't foraged very much into my Options menu)? Because not once in this game have I approached anything resembling button-mashing.
Also I gotta say that Aveline is really growing on me. At first I thought she was neglected, writing-wise, but it's starting to look a lot like understatement. It's nice to have a strong female character who's both un-romanceable and not a blowhard hiding deep insecurities.
I actually really love Aveline as a character, despite the complete ho-hum nature of the introductory 10 minutes of the game (ie. I couldn't give a two-shits about Wesley). At the very least, she's probably the most inoffensive character of the whole lot.
Especially when half the tits in this game are uncomfortably huge. No, seriously, designers. Corsets are not an excuse for endangering the women's centre of gravities.
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You can't turn off auto-attack in the PC version. For consoles, EA apparently mastered a non-final build of the game or fudged the option while mastering (somehow) and the auto-attack button is disabled. As far as I'm aware that's still the case. So yeah, you have to continually press A to attack on the console version of the game. At least for now.
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Okay that is pretty straight out stupid in that aspect. I do appreciate them trying to put a connection between an attack and the actual press of a button, but I can see how that can be pretty grating for someone used to an auto-attack.
EDIT: While I think the color palette and the overarching design of everything is probably a step up from what I saw in Origins, I'm really starting to get miffed with the amount of copypasta in this game, especially when it comes to environments. I'm not usually a stickler for detail in the broad sense of the term, but some of these dungeons I've gone through are direct facsimiles of ones I've gone through before, and that's nigh-unforgivable.
It's like having a racing game call a mirror track an entirely new one.
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I want to say it would've been better to have copy-pasted environs be actually the same space, but even factoring the span of years the game has, that would severely limit their scope. It's baffling. Was 2 years really not enough time to produce more environments, factoring in their non-interactive nature?
Then again, the city's #1 employers seem to be highwaymen gangs and apostate cabals, and you must kill something like a thousand people within city limits, so breaking realism's not really an issue.
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Sorta related - Bio is open to a Jade Empire sequel (http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/101964-bioware-still-considering-a-jade-empire-sequel.html). IIRC, JE2 was in production at some point and is the only game that Bioware ever canceled in such a state (I'm sure there have been many aborted pre-production games).
Meanwhile, back at the Bioboards... They've split up the DA2 forums into registered and unregistered portions, and in order to post in the registered forum you need to have a copy of DA2 linked to your account. The problem with this is that any sort of criticism of the game results in an EA account ban which, quite controversially, locks you out of playing DA2 until you go through an appeals process of some sort.
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Are we talking any and all criticism, or metafilter-level illiterate hatetrolling?
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There were a lot of complaints about lockings and bans in otherwise reasonable threads back in the old conglomerated forum. The problem seems to be that threads expressing honest criticism or disappointment quickly devolve into arguments, some involving the OP, some not, but the OP would get banned for trolling. Some of the mods (Stanley Woo, mostly) are widely regarded to be dickheads, but looking over the (very young) registered forum, the only person locking looks to be Chris Priestly and he's left a number of negative threads up. At this juncture, it looks like people are safe. I imagine they'll be employing a light touch until EA fixes the lockout issue, because there's no better way to stir up a biblical PR shitstorm than unilaterally removing the ability of paying customers to play your game. *ed - Rock Paper Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/15/biowhere-ea-working-on-fixing-game-bans/) has a story on it. EA reserves the right to lock games out in its fine print, but they're going into damage control anyway, as they should.
Anyway, here's a video someone made of a DA2 street fight (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6jKffsx4l8&feature=player_detailpage#t=145s).
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Anyway, here's a video someone made of a DA2 street fight (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6jKffsx4l8&feature=player_detailpage#t=145s).
ho ho ha ha
how incredibly subtle
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http://www.virtualshackles.com/197
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Also, out of curiosity, are you playing a console version or something (or a PC version with auto-attack off, idk I haven't foraged very much into my Options menu)? Because not once in this game have I approached anything resembling button-mashing.
Console; I swiped my brother's xbox since he's so busy with college anyway. Honestly though, what I played of the demo on PC didn't make me feel like it'd be much better for the reasons KvP outlined. Having autoattack would be great and all, but for me the primary problem seems to be that for rogues and warriors, at least, it doesn't particularly matter when you use the vast majority of abilities. To go WoW nerd here again for a moment, warriors and especially rogues work like PvE Ret Paladins did right before Blizzard realized the design was a joke in WotLK and went back to the drawing board. Basically, everything is on a cooldown, so often times you'll only have one or two abilities to choose from at a time and typically the safest and fastest way to win a fight is to simply activate every ability you have as they become available. It is virtually always better to be doing something than nothing, and oftentimes there's only one applicable something for you to do. Bleh.
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Really? I actually find choosing the timing of when to do certain rogue skills like Evade, Backstab and other skills to obscure the character do a fine job of literally dodging and cancelling enemy attacks that otherwise would have hit me. I feel there's more strategy than you give it credit for. I wouldn't know about the Warrior class, as it seems to have always been a class that you could just sic on the enemy to do their own thing to soak up damage, but at the very least there's still a big importance in the timing for the rogue class, especially when the spatial aspect of battles actually has an effect on how attacks land.
I think the battles that stand out the most are the ones involving mages and minibosses, basically enemies that hit hard and throw a helluva lot of spells. It's a lot more economical if you save a Rush or Miasmic Flask for a mage when they're charging a spell, or avoid using Backstab or Evade until an ogre charges you or does a Slam. You have a point, though, as most standard enemies fold like paper at some point in the game, but on the harder difficulties (which imo everyone should be playing on because Normal DAII is like Casual Origins), you get a lot more out of skills if you're selective about how and when to use them.
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I dunno, the Warrior skills in DA:O were pretty good. I seem to remember using Alistair as a decent tank but also using his shield bash and assault skills to good use, especially against frozen enemies. There were tactical decisions there to be made if you could be bothered.
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Yeah but like, in Origins it was possible to actually die and stuff. Cranking up the difficultly would probably help, I guess, but man, DAII normal is piss easy.
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I got so much pimped out gear because of all the preorder stuff and free stuff I set it to hard to start with. It's just a shame that I got two sets of special plate mail that apparently nobody in my party will use. I feel lame just selling the blood dragon armor for extra scratch but I don't know what else to do with it.
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I think like what a lot of reviews were saying, anyone who didn't have a problem with Origins difficulty should be playing DAII on the harder ones. I had a ball dying all the time in Origins (on hard difficulty), but in Dragon Age II I think I've definitively died 2 times out of 37 hours of my game on Hard difficulty.
And honestly I don't mind. It's a refreshing change. :psyduck:
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hahaha the end of act II is unbelievably fucking infuriating
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Infuriating enough that gritting my teeth through the meat of Act II will be worth it? I've hit the beginning of it and stalled. I'm bored by the fighting, and I know it won't change.
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here's what i will say: i guess if you haven't pumped your friendship with isabela (read: if you're a dual-wielding rogue who like why would you ever even put isabela in your party then) or if you aren't romancing her apparently then either a) make the fuck sure the arishok likes you b) bring fenris with you on the last mission just in case. this is what i've found out is the thing. im seriously dissatisfied with this bullshit
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Oh yeah, I heard about that. Did you have that thing happen at the end of Act 1?
*e - For the discerning PC gamer, it looks like somebody made a Isabela white-ification mod (http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/images/2274-4-1300377568.jpg).
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Also man, from what I hear, you are going to love Anders come Act 3.
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What the fuck is even going on in that screenshot. This is a game that came out a month ago from one of the biggest developers in gaming?
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What the fuck is even going on in that screenshot. This is a game that came out a month ago from one of the biggest developers in gaming?
In terms of visuals? There was a separate, manual-install high-res texture pack for the PC that helped a little bit, but yeah, I remember DA:O being really gorgeous texture-wise (check it (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_v1nyF-OLGLU/TUm37etlxnI/AAAAAAAABWc/wQAWLrJpPvw/s1600/dragon-age-origins-xbox-360-065.jpg)) whereas this... well, peek at that crate on the right. I chalk it up to the engine change.
As for the UI, it looks cheap but it succeeds at being unobtrusive. I haven't figured out how to use it when you've got 10+ abilities and items, though.
As for the half-naked elf, that's a mod, since you're not allowed a different body model in the vanilla game.
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In a stunning reversal of modding etiquette, someone has made a mod that adds pants to Isabela's model (http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2315).
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Also FYI:
There is a bug with regards to attack speed and damage reduction in DA2. Players will often times find themselves attacking much, much slower, or end up having Damage Reduction in the negatives.
This is related to Isabela's and Sebastian's 'friendship' talents, which give Hawke +5% attack speed and +5% damage reduction, respectively.
It seems that every time these talents are removed, they end up stripping attack speed and damage reduction off of Hawke.
In short, once you reach Friendship with Isabela and Sebastian, each time you remove them from your party, use a Maker's Sigh, or are revived after falling, you take a penalty to the respective stat. Because there is no value shown, players will not notice these effects until Hawke is attacking in slow motion or notices the negative damage reduction in the character profile.
As of now, there is no way to fix this. The only work-around is to simply not build up the friendship bar to the point where the talents activate.
Simply! (also FYI once you reach the limit of friendship / rivalry on the bar, it locks in place)
This is a particularly fucked bug because of the vaguely drawn events that Johnny alludes to at the end of Act 2. As far as I know, it plays out to the player's benefit if you have certain friendship bars maxed. Now there's some choice and consequence!
*e - for PC players, you can use a DA:O savegame editor (http://social.bioware.com/project/1936/#details) to negate the bug effects. How? No one knows!
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Holy shit.
The Dragon Age team isn't going to touch Mass Effect, right?
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Not as far as I'm aware. Besides, if ME3 is anything like ME2 there won't be many stats like "attack speed" and "damage resistance" that will affect the game. ME2's combat system is pretty simple, and effective.
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I'm pretty sure that the DA:O editor works because most of the original programing/tech was left untouched in the DA2.
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That's not uncommon between sequels. Many of the tools used to mess with code in Bethesda games work from Oblivion all the way up to New Vegas. As I understand it, you can even use Morrowind-era tools to a point. Reusing systems familiar to coders should theoretically result in faster turnaround times and fewer bugs.
Anyway, lead developer quote time!
"Is it important to have more content in the game, or is it important that the content be 100-percent unique?" - Mike Laidlaw
Mike Laidlaw 8-)
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Betrayal
every previous BioWare game, I always felt that almost every companion in the game was designed for the male gamer in mind. Every female love interest was always written as a male friend type support character. In Dragon Age 2, I felt like most of the companions were designed to appeal to other groups foremost, Anders and Fenris for gays and Aveline for women given the lack of strong women in games, and that for the straight male gamer, a secondary concern. It makes things very awkward when your male companions keep making passes at you. The fact that a "No Homosexuality" option, which could have been easily implemented, is omitted just proves my point. I know there are some straight male gamers out there who did not mind it at and I respect that.
When I say BioWare neglected The Straight Male Gamer, I don't mean that they ignored male gamers. The romance options, Isabella and Merrill, were clearly designed for the straight male gamers in mind. Unfortunately, those choices are what one would call "exotic" choices. They appeal to a subset of male gamers and while its true you can't make a romance option everyone will love, with Isabella and Merrill it seems like they weren't even going for an option most males will like. And the fact is, they could have. They had the resources to add another romance option, but instead chose to implement a gay romance with Anders.
You know what, disregard everything I've ever said about DA2. Buy it, so you can spite twats like this.
Meanwhile, Fair-skinned Isabela (http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2236) is the 4th most downloaded DA2 mod in existence ("Basically, this is a complete revamp of Isabela. She is by far my favorite companion in DA2, but I couldn't stand her overly dark... everything! (just not my type). ;) So, I put my PS skills and patience to the test and started makin her a whole new kind of beautiful! The work was worth it cause here she is, in all her fair skinned, blonde haired and blue eyed glory. :)")
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The sad thing is that he's restarted the same thread at least three times (the latest was 12 hrs ago or something). I feel really sorry for this guy.
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To be fair I remember Isabela being more fair haired than gypsy-ish in the first game.
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(http://dragonage.neoseeker.com/w/i/dragonage/thumb/8/8b/Isabella.jpg/300px-Isabella.jpg)
Sort of...
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It would be less disconcerting if the mod restored her to her DA:O look instead of an explicitly Aryan ideal.
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The redhead version of the mod looks the closest and the most visually appealing imo.
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Bug hotfixx! (http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2299)
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This is a particularly fucked bug because of the vaguely drawn events that Johnny alludes to at the end of Act 2. As far as I know, it plays out to the player's benefit if you have certain friendship bars maxed. Now there's some choice and consequence!
it unequivocally does! and like wouldn't even be a thing if isabela was at all fucking useful for a dual-wielding rogue. god damn it
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I have no idea what's going on in this review (http://www.destructoid.com/review-dragon-age-ii-196964.phtml).
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I disagree with that review on number of points, but at least I get the strong impression that we've been playing the same game even if we disagree on some of the highly subjective stuff.
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Ugh I don't think I can finish Act 3 because I am tired of mages attacking me when I am on their bloody side.
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We weren't kidding when we said everybody's a goddamn blood mage.
Anyway, it'll be worth it once you reach the end.
...
...
...
...
...
SPOILER
...
It really won't be.
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I have no idea how to frame this post... I'm going to end up doing some crazy hobo rant, I just know it.
I want to like DA2 more than Origins. I really, really do. All the pieces are there for me to like it more. The more Low Fantasy-ish plot line, the lack of a genuine outright villain, and significantly more gray morality. (The one possible exception is in the Deep Roads and he's more a greedy asshole than an outright cackly villain type.) Other features such as the revamped combat, the voiced protagonist and the new dialogue range from big improvement to minor improvement to mild indifference, respectively.
It's the story though that's twisting me up. I feel like I'm reading every second or third chapter of what is actually a really good book, but I can't get into it like I should because I'm missing so much of the narrative. It's just barely enough to pick up the plot but except for Varrics little blurp at the start of a few acts there's very little exposition or, more importantly, build up.
It's like having your friend lend to a book with only his marked "best bits" in it and told you to just read those without realising it's them in context to the whole story that makes them so good. It's like reading the about the Siege of Minas Tirith, without the greater context of the Lord of the Rings. Sure, it's still pretty cool, but lacking context it stops short of Bioware's usual epic-ness.*
Also, don't get me started on the epilogue. This game has less resolution than a 12" monitor from '96 with half the pixels burnt out. Any narrative has three parts a beginning, middle and end. This counts for each Act, not just the story as a whole. For each act I feel like I've played through the middle without a cohesive beginning or end. A framed narrative doesn't give you the excuse to ignore narrative causality.
*N.B. I wouldn't normally use "epic-ness" to describe anything in this context but it's the word the Dev team keeps throwing around.
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It's very weird - The two things I can reliably depend upon in Bioware games are a definite sense of discipline when it comes to pacing and a focused narrative, and DA2 is really severely lacking in both. It's is such a complete break from tradition, I'm convinced it was either a fundamental design fuckup or a rushed release. It's probably a lot of both. I'm actually hoping it's the former, because if it is then there's little reason to worry about the implications for ME3 (few if any DA designers work on ME, though some writers do, particularly Gaider who pens Kaidan and... one or two other characters I think). If it's the latter, we could be looking at similar quality compromise via EA's push to perform.
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the new dialogue system i actually like a bunch because it is closer to alpha protocol than mass effect in spirit
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It would be less disconcerting if the mod restored her to her DA:O look instead of an explicitly Aryan ideal.
Well blonde is just one option you can take.
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Hey JD
"in all her fair skinned, blonde haired and blue eyed glory. :)"
Like that is the actual quote from the mod page by the author. How can you not say that he wasn't going for a somewhat creepy Aryan ideal? In that statement he pretty much says that he was. That smiley emoticon Speaks volumes.
The other hair options are just after thought palette switches.
the new dialogue system i actually like a bunch because it is closer to alpha protocol than mass effect in spirit
That is why I don't like it. There were a few times when I wasn't sure what the heck what Hawke was going to say.
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Oh certainly, I'm just having trouble getting worked up about it.
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It'd be easier for me to be dismissive of it too if it weren't for the time my sister cried because she thought her skin meant she'll never be pretty. People are free to do what they want with their games, but such comments will continue to disappoint me a bit.
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(http://i516.photobucket.com/albums/u330/Dreamcastguy/zRliI.jpg)
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To be fair, most new RPGs tend to separate strict quest/story progression and background info/world building dialogue streams instead of giving a long list right off the bat.
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Because they're not bound to text. If you have to tell people most things through telling, not showing since you simply can't show that much, it would be stupid if you had a narrator tell you everything, so it's better just to cram info into NPCs.
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"the perfect font for this image about how rpgs have been dumbed down is comic sans"
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Yeah, shoulda used Helvetica for the first one so they could at least claim it was intentional.
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have i mentioned how pissed off i was when i found out i couldn't do the blood smear on my custom guy's nose. i was pretty pissed off
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I think the savegame editor hacker dude figured out a way to at least customize the default face to some extent. I can try and track it down if you like. If you feel like going through the game again.
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Meanwhile, the 360 version got bumped up to a 79 on Metacritic, one point above Shadows of Undrentide, which takes it out of the running for least well-received Bio product (though in SoU's defense, it was essentially an xpac that an outside company royally fucked up and Bioware admirably turned around in short order).
An interview with DA2's lead level designer gosts published. It apparently wasn't from a gaming site, so the questions were surprisingly hardball:
Q: It seems DA2 abandons the free origin choice and its predecessor's variety of powers in favor of a defined and dubbed main character. What was the thought line behind this change?
A: In this game we wanted to tell a specific story, more personal. A talking hero is a very strong thing and so is a specific man with a history and family of his own. This is a different approach which meant we had to give up the freedom of the character designs. The team believes that overall this approach is better and developes the genre towards more interesting directions.
...
Q: Kirkwall is a very small area compared to vast Ferelden we could play during the first game. Have you prefferd giving the city more depth over creating more places where you can hang around? Can you give an example?
A: This time we tried a different approach - enable the players to investigate only one main area, which has more depth and responsiveness. You can compare it to GTA game, where you are always in the same city, or maybe even compare it to Assassin's Creed to a certain degree.
Q: Why are the city's streets not as crowded as one can expect from a city as congested as Kirkwall? Is it due to technical limitations?
A: Yes, this is completely due to technical limitation. We had more people crowding the streets in early stages of development but we had to cut the number to be able to cope with the limitations of game consoles and low-end computers.
Q: Could prolonging development time for the game result in a better variety within the city itself and avoiding reused areas, as seen in the game?
A: Obviously, more time would enable more areas and bigger variation. Honestly, we did not expect this to be such a big deal, but it seems the subject gave rise to a significant number of complaints by both critics and players alike. We listen to the reviews and we will try to address the issue in future games.
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Q: Does every battle consist of enemy waves? What is your answer for all those people that claim the lack of ability to know the number of waves and where they will pop up causes a battle that consists of reactions instead of tactics and planning?
A: Part of the tactical game is adapting to changes. The waves might feel different, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. I do not agree with those that think the wave pattern is terrible as of itself, but I do agree that there are things it's possible to do in order to improve the use of the waves. We can use them less often and improve the breeding mechanic, for instance. All in all I think the waves are an excellent addition to the game.
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Q: Why is the tactical game view unavailable in this game? Is the reason technical, aesthetic or a design problem?
A: Support for upper angle of view means creating the graphics in such a way that'll enable cutting the upper parts of the geometry, when you use that option. This causes a decline in quality because it's impossible, or at least very hard, to create the same environments in this way. In short - it was a difficult decision but we believe it was right.
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Q: Blood Magic is a forbidden art in the world of DA2, but the main character uses it freely during the game against civilians and Templars. How is that logical?
A: Well, sometimes you have to give up perfect inner logic to make the game more fun. This is one of these cases. Anyway, this can be explained by the fact that the champion is someone who can do whatever he wants. No one is bold enough to lecture him about that. This is kind of like when the authorities ignore certain crimes because the criminal's aid is of great importance.
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Q: Why is it no longer possible to manage your party's gear? Why is it that an armor worn by Hawke cannot be given to other characters?
A: There are many benefits of keeping a unique appearance for the companions: it gives them presence during cutscenes and dialogues and it's even useful during combat - they're easier to tell apart that way. I know it limits the possible customization but there are still many other elements you can upgrade such as weapons, accessories and even upgrade the main armor's stats.
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It'd be easier for me to be dismissive of it too if it weren't for the time my sister cried because she thought her skin meant she'll never be pretty. People are free to do what they want with their games, but such comments will continue to disappoint me a bit.
Well it's a influence thing. I don't think that many people mod their games at all. Conversely some big name magazine should never promote that sort of view, but they do anyway because it nets the more money.
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"We listen to the reviews and we will try to address the issue in future games."
Excellent.
"All in all I think the waves are an excellent addition to the game."
No no, fuck you.
All the reponses after that are completely shit.
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it gives them presence during cutscenes and dialogues
Pretty sure that this should be done with VA and writing. I'm hoping that this was only really done because of the development cycle.
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it gives them presence during cutscenes and dialogues
Pretty sure that this should be done with VA and writing. I'm hoping that this was only really done because of the development cycle.
it's the same thing they did in mass effect but like everything else they ported over from mass effect it doesn't work as well as it did in mass effect
also the biggest "fuck you" in there is probably either the patronizing "you can even pump your characters' stats!!!!!" thing OR the ridiculous assertion that it's "like GTA"
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Oh, you can compare their approach to GTA or Assassin's Creed. Just not favorably. I'm not a Rockstar fanboy by any means, but barren isn't a word that came to mind when playing San Andreas.
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(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/643/videogamesinheavenandhe.jpg)
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I never want to go to hell now.
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i love how bioware is in the same category
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For the same game, even
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Patch Info!
There are a VERY large number of fixes in this patch. We've addressed everything we could - most people will be happy their issue has been fixed, unfortunately (as usual) some people will still scream obscenities for ignoring them (though the reason a fix may not be included is always more complicated than that).
The ETA is 'soon' - I can tell you for sure it will not be this week (ending Mar27th) aside from that there is nothing close to concrete enough to give you any more information.
Man I've seen developers get defensive before but throwing in jabs at malcontents in patch release announcements is a little much.
Meanwhile, I think I found the weak link (http://www.gamespot.com/features/6305575/index.html), so to speak.
GameSpot: How do you think the reception for Dragon Age II would have been different if this had been the first game in the series?
Mike Laidlaw: I think it would have been different--exactly how is probably hard to tell, at this point. When you think about Dragon Age, one of the things that comes to mind is the legacy, going back to the Baldur's Gate games and that kind of thing. Actually, [that comparison] was drawn during Origins. It was an explicit, spiritual successor kind of connection. Certainly, I think Origins did a very good job of following in that vein. What Dragon Age II does, or what I perceive it as doing, is take a lot of those gameplay elements--working together as a team, functioning as a combat unit, having a story that unfolds with choices (all of those core things that I see as principal to both Baldur's Gate and, more importantly, to Dragon Age)--and tries to bring some newer ideas to the table (elements of responsiveness, elements of interactivity in the way those fights are coordinated) into what I think is a more modern setting and expectation. For most players, the idea of the solo combat is surprising.
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I've talked to Origins players who said, "As soon as I moved it to hard, I totally see where Origins is again." That's fair, and I think that's something over time we'll continue to tune and capitalize on that fusion between the Origins experience and Dragon Age II.
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The goal that we were going for (with a pre-defined character) is twofold. First, we did want to focus in on a more personal experience--the experience of one person and not the avatar of an organization. To be quite frank, that's a story we told before, and while there's nothing wrong with it, we really wanted to challenge ourselves to not have you end up in the Jedi Order or a Child of Baal, what have you.
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When I look where Dragon Age II leaves us, it leaves us with a phase that's inherently more interesting--one where we see strife and things falling apart. This is in stark contrast to the ending of Origins, where we saw things resolved. Oh good, the Blight's over. That's great.
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The key driver behind (the lack of CNPC customization) was the idea of unique visuals, being able to have Isabela stay Isabela instead of generic rogue put into the same leather armor your character is wearing. It lets us create a visual space between Hawke and the companions. And it gives the companions their own personalities [in the form of] unique body models and animations that are tied to how they idle--simple stuff like Aveline and the way she stands with more of a straightforward stance as opposed to the cocked hip Isabela has and so on. The overall goal there was to keep the companions in a place where they had more personality, but still provide customization in terms of amulets and rings, because having things like fire resistance is important.
It's likely that we'll end up coming back to a way to equip your followers, but at the same time, I really do think that having their own visual signature is really important. It's something that resolves one of the parts I really disliked about Origins where I'd see people's screenshots with their badass team and they would kind of all look the same.
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I don't think (a tactical system) is particularly welcoming or something that I would want to integrate as core gameplay. It's a "with great power comes great responsibility" system where it's possible to make your characters do nothing as a result of it. I think it's best if someone seeks it out, looks up tutorials, messes with it in a way that they have an intent to understand how it works and to play at a higher level.
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Looking at the fundamentals and looking at the overall pacing and flow became our focus for Dragon Age II, and the thing we have a mandate to do is add in suitable and fitting additional activities. My next big goal is to make sure that there are deeper interactions with crafting or the next steps in terms of being able to do more than talk, fight, and disarm traps.
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You have to take a read of what the fans are saying, what reviews are saying, and what the non-fans are saying. Are there people out there who are saying, "I could not play Origins, but love Dragon Age II" or "I couldn't play Origins and this is more of the same."
I think the big key is to not adjust 180 degrees again, because we've done this. I think, as a team, we're quite happy with what we've done with Dragon Age II, and this is establishing a solid foundation that keeps a lot, in fact almost everything I want to keep about Origins, but still has tons of room to grow and, frankly, a more viable future for the franchise.
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GS: How does this spot you're in right now compare to, when you first started Dragon Age, where you thought you might end up after a second game in the series? Are you largely where you expected to be?
ML: For context, our original expectation for this franchise was established when we were working on Jade Empire.
It has party members. It has banter. It has equipping stuff--some of those amazing, classic RPG mechanics that I loved since playing Wasteland or the original Bard's Tale. We wanted to make RPGs, especially fantasy RPGs, accessible, cool, and interesting to people who have been playing RPGs for the last seven years and not realizing that every time they ate food or went for a long run in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, they were essentially grinding constitution.
Meanwhile, back in the blogosphere, Brent Knowles, former Bioware employee and DA:O lead designer, gives his thoughts on the demo (http://blog.brentknowles.com/2011/03/14/dragon-age-2-demo/).
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Then I suppose it makes me a bad person to be able to see where Mike Laidlaw is coming from. :-(
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For the same game, even
Well same series. The Hell screenshot is ME1.
Then I suppose it makes me a bad person to be able to see where Mike Laidlaw is coming from. :-(
Not at all. I get where he's coming from. I even agree with a fair bit of it. I think a fair bit is the fact that he has to (for employment reasons) tip-toe around the development cycle issue. DA2's biggest change in my opinion is it's short develpment cycle. A lot of the issues he's acknowledged but can't expand on because it's plainly his job on the line.
DA2 needed another 6 months to a year in development for them to have made something truely spectacular with it. In my opinion, that's what this whole thing boils down to.
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I don't think Laidlaw's crazy, but I'm not convinced that, given the design flaws of the game, that another year would have made much difference. The combat system, such as it is, is quite polished, it's just not good.
It just strikes me as funny that he would say this:
When I look where Dragon Age II leaves us, it leaves us with a phase that's inherently more interesting--one where we see strife and things falling apart. This is in stark contrast to the ending of Origins, where we saw things resolved. Oh good, the Blight's over. That's great.
When DA2's ending is most reminiscent of KOTOR2's, and completely (and I mean completely) removes all player choice. Nothing you do matters at the end at all. And it's a cliffhanger.
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Damn, that's harsh. But now that I think about it I kinda see where you're coming from. But still, if I were a developer I'd take that comment like a kick to the junk.
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It seems like an excuse to sell us DLC.
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Essentially. I'm not anti-DLC at all but when you release a shoddy game sans closure (at $60, no less) and shore it up with paid DLC, that's pretty bullshit. If they give it away for free (which, considering the Exiled Prince, seems unlikely) that would be better.
But it would make sense, given that DA2 was promoted as taking place over 10 years, but the core game only takes place over 7.
Every statement I've read from Mike Laidlaw indicates that he's just... not a very good designer, even if you take into account all the spin that goes into what he says. Something like this:
The key driver behind (the lack of CNPC customization) was the idea of unique visuals, being able to have Isabela stay Isabela instead of generic rogue put into the same leather armor your character is wearing. It lets us create a visual space between Hawke and the companions. And it gives the companions their own personalities [in the form of] unique body models and animations that are tied to how they idle--simple stuff like Aveline and the way she stands with more of a straightforward stance as opposed to the cocked hip Isabela has and so on. The overall goal there was to keep the companions in a place where they had more personality, but still provide customization in terms of amulets and rings, because having things like fire resistance is important.
You can definitely posit that the lack of CNPC customization is a result of the dearth of dev time that DA2 received, but it's hard to not come to the conclusion that Laidlaw thought his system was a good one. It's one of several things from ME2 that the DA2 devs tried to replicate in a way that misses the point entirely. In ME2, the lack of customization really worked the way that Laidlaw claims it does in DA2, in that the models in UE3 were well-detailed but mainly because there wasn't really an inventory system to speak of, so it didn't matter. It was neat and economical and worked. In DA2, by contrast, if you play as a mage, the majority of the stuff you pick up is worthless, with all armors being unusable by you and unusable by your party, resulting in a level of inventory clutter beyond the usual flotsam (and why does Hawke collect so many torn trousers and moth-eaten scarves? Is he/she a hoarder?). It's less pronounced as a fighter or rogue, but the standardized stat requirements act as de facto class restrictions (rogues are weapon-locked just as mages are)
I don't think, given another year of dev time, that issues like that would have been resolved. It's a cheap knockoff of good design that doesn't capture any of the good elements of DA:O or ME2, despite all attempts.
Also, fire resistance is important in exactly one encounter, in which you fight a dragon.
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No one said you have to buy the DLC(hint hint wink wink). Though if the initial game doesn't give you any jollies I don't know how the DLC would.
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Essentially. I'm not anti-DLC at all but when you release a shoddy game sans closure (at $60, no less) and shore it up with paid DLC, that's pretty bullshit.
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I'm not anti-DLC either, but I think we need to add another column to the HEAVEN/HELL jpeg.
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VGChartz has sales figures (http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/sales/44012/dragon-age-ii/).
Comparison between first two weeks of DA:O and DA2 sales -
DA2 (360)
Week Americas Japan EMEAA Worldwide Running Total
1 292,492 N/A 100,016 392,508 392,508
2 96,235 N/A 32,662 128,897 521,405
DA:O (360)
Week Americas Japan EMEAA Worldwide Running Total
1 243,262 12,860 79,819 335,941 335,941
2 132,395 3,240 37,595 173,230 509,171
....
DAO
Week Americas Japan EMEAA Worldwide Running Total
1 112,887 39,756 3,017 155,660 155,660
2 58,460 11,726 2,118 72,304 227,964
DA2 (PC)
Week Americas Japan EMEAA Worldwide Running Total
1 89,198 N/A 54,632 143,830 143,830
2 27,446 N/A 10,556 38,002 181,832
Holy hell the PC Market fucking sucks
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I don't think, given another year of dev time, that issues like that would have been resolved. It's a cheap knockoff of good design that doesn't capture any of the good elements of DA:O or ME2, despite all attempts.
Eh, I'm inclined to disagree. A lot of the things you listed aren't issues to me, personally, the only major problem I have with DA2 is my afformentioned story issues which, I strongly suspect, could well have been fixed with a longer development cycle.
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john why didn't you ever quote gaider from the Straight Male Gamer thread, his response is surprisingly lucid
To the OP: doing the same act repeatedly and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. What you hope to achieve by posting the same thread over and over again I can't honestly say.
To some of the others on this thread: While an ignorant opinion politely expressed doesn't make it less ignorant, I will say that the behavior of some of you is far worse. Calling someone a "troll" who expressed his thoughts in an intelligent manner and acting like hooligans suggesting if you just throw enough dirt that eventually that person will either go away or the thread will get locked will earn you a ban. No matter the opinion, I think how it's expressed deserves the same in kind. If you can't do that, refrain.
To the issue: I've said it before and I'll say it again-- perhaps a bit more eloquently, since it's apparently of dire concern to some.
The romances in the game are not for "the straight male gamer". They're for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don't need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant... and that's ignoring the idea that they don't have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else. The "rights" of anyone with regards to a game are murky at best, but anyone who takes that stance must apply it equally to both the minority as well as the majority. The majority has no inherent "right" to get more options than anyone else.
More than that, I would question anyone deciding they speak for "the straight male gamer" just as much as someone claiming they speak for "all RPG fans", "all female fans" or even "all gay fans". You don't. If you wish to express your personal desires, then do so. I have no doubt that any opinion expressed on these forums is shared by many others, but since none of them have elected a spokesperson you're better off not trying to be one. If your attempt is to convince BioWare developers, I can tell you that you do in fact make your opinion less convincing by doing so.
And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as "political correctness" if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don't see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what's everyone's fuss all about? That's the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.
The truth is that making a romance available for both genders is far less costly than creating an entirely new one. Does it create some issues of implementation? Sure-- but anything you try on this front is going to have its issues, and inevitably you'll always leave someone out in the cold. In this case, are all straight males left out in the cold? Not at all. There are romances available for them just the same as anyone else. Not all straight males require that their content be exclusive, after all, and you can see that even on this thread.
Would I do it again? I don't know. I doubt I would have Anders make the first move again-- at the time, I thought that requiring all romances to have Hawke initiate everything was the unrealistic part. Even if someone decides that this makes everyone "unrealistically" bisexual, however, or they can't handle the idea that the character might be bisexual if they were another PC... I don't see that as a big concern, to be honest. Romances are never one-size-fits-all, and even for those who don't mind the sexuality issue there's no guarantee they'll find a character they even want to romance. That's why romances are optional content. It's such a personal issue that we'll never be able to please everyone. The very best we can do is give everyone a little bit of choice, and that's what we tried here.
And the person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least. And that's my opinion, expressed as politely as possible.
In a wall of text. Sorry about that. /images/forum/emoticons/smile.png
And I'm sorry if someone didn't get everything they wanted out of the romances-- as I always am. I wish we could do the ideal where there's something for every desire and opinion, but as usual we make do.
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Gaider had been quiet for a bit so I was focusing on Laidlaw. Yeah, he comported himself well. Just give him another few days and he'll put his foot firmly in his mouth again, in all likelihood.
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It'll be cool when Bioware grows up and realizes that there's good reasons for characters to have sexualities other than to enable you to have sex with them.
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Maybe where you hang out.
I'm really not sure whether I should look into getting this or not. I enjoyed DA:O although I never finished it (got distracted with other games) and have never really felt the desire to go back to it, either... likely because I'd gotten pretty far through and have a thing where I need to start from scratch if I've not played a game for a long time.
The feedback saying they've moved it closer to a kind of Mass Effect 2 in a fantasy setting strikes me as a bad thing also, despite the fact I absolutely love ME2. I'm kind of like... that's not really what I would want from the DA franchise?
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It'll be cool when Bioware grows up and realizes that there's good reasons for characters to have sexualities other than to enable you to have sex with them.
Play New Vegas! There are gay characters who just hang around and are gay without the player's permission! It's awesome!
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bioware wants you to be able to romance characters, obsidian doesn't, apples and oranges imo
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Bioware narratives fall into the traditional hero journey which tends to involve "hero gets the girl". Ain't that big of a deal, no.
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It'll be cool when Bioware grows up and realizes that there's good reasons for characters to have sexualities other than to enable you to have sex with them.
Play New Vegas! There are gay characters who just hang around and are gay without the player's permission! It's awesome!
Indeed. Arcade is possibly the best gay, game character ever written. Everyone goes on and on about Bioware's characters, but I seriously think Obsidian has them beat hands down.
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That's also because Bioware releases games (not necessarily this one) that are incredibly well-made. Obsidian's track record is not fantastic at all and it's harder to leap praise on the people who made Alpha Protocol.
They may write better characters and stories but the game part of their games need way more work.
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No it ain't. Obsidian is the bee's tits.
Their main problem comes from being hired to make sequels for other people; their deadlines are much stricter than others. What's usually the first part of development to get the chopping block when time is running out? Bugfixing. I'm 95% certain they already knew about a lot of the bugs their games had before release, but had to skip over fixing them so they'd make their ship date. I'm not even certain they were given the time for compatibility testing for a lot of those games. If I recall correctly, Fallout 3 only got like 2 weeks of it, so I'm pretty sure New Vegas got none. The games themselves are really solid, just a bit more broken than people generally like them to be.
I hope I'm not starting something by saying all that, I just work in QA and don't much like seeing people discredit developers for putting up with the harsh reality of deadlines as best they can. Good QA and bugfixing are generally the line in the sand between a game being 'well-made' and everything else. A lot of developers have the first part of that, but no time for the second part. Bioware is one of the lucky few, and even then they still have some issues.
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I don't know, I love Obsidian but my only real defense for the ridiculous number of bugs that get through their games are a list of my favorite RPGs and how goddamn bug addled and yet amazing they were.
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Yeah, that's basically my point. Games can still be great, even with bugs. Ideally, there wouldn't be so many, but if the game is still fun despite all of that, then they're doing good work.
I'm not a huge Obsidian fan or anything like that, but they do make fun games. I do think that if they weren't forced to any deadlines or other side projects, they'd release something at least on par with ME2 or DA:O, at least in the eyes of the public. Maybe they'll get that chance after how well New Vegas did, who knows.
But to stay on topic, I haven't played the game (I did play DA:O), but a bunch of the RPG-playing folks at work are not impressed. I think the consensus is that the Laidlaw probably should have been a bit more flexible in his design decisions. In DA:O, these folks were regretting decisions they made for story purposes, but in this game they've been forced into a narrower story path, and are instead regretting decisions they made because of how it affected gameplay later.
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Basically all I mean is that if anyone tries to tell me Arcanum and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines weren't amazing I'll shit down their neck.
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^ haven't played Arcanum but completly agreed on Vampire.
The only thing I was dissapointed by was the fact that it didn't stay as a "slut 'em up" at later stages.
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Basically all I mean is that if anyone tries to tell me Arcanum and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines weren't amazing I'll shit down their neck.
Arcanum was big potential and small payoff, dude
Although, the Truth about Half-Ogres quest is probably the single most memorable quest in any RPG I've ever played, and the only one that actually disturbed me. It's still creepy to think about. But that doesn't change the fact that pretty much every system in the game is broken.
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It'll be cool when Bioware grows up and realizes that there's good reasons for characters to have sexualities other than to enable you to have sex with them.
Play New Vegas! There are gay characters who just hang around and are gay without the player's permission! It's awesome!
I was thinking of New Vegas when I wrote that, not sure why I didn't mention it. But it's funny how most of the companions in NV is more interesting than the ones in DA:O (and I presume DA2), when the Dragon Age games rely much more on the companions as supporting cast.
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It'd be easier for me to be dismissive of it too if it weren't for the time my sister cried because she thought her skin meant she'll never be pretty. People are free to do what they want with their games, but such comments will continue to disappoint me a bit.
People like you hurt feelings
***NOTICE***
I will not be updating any of my mods or adding any new ones on the Nexus anytime soon. If fact, I may just be done modding for now. I have received so many wonderful comments and really appreciate everyone's support, but honestly I'm sick of all the complaints I receive EVERY DAY from ungrateful jerks who think my mods are not good enough for them. My PM inbox is literally littered with complaints and raciest accusations toward my mods. It would be different if it was constructive criticism, but its not, its just pansy complaints and ignorant accusations. So, I'm done. I hope you've all enjoyed my mods and continue to do so. And to all the bastards that caused me to just give up, get a frigging life, my mods took days and hours of patience and hard work, learn a little respect and appreciation.
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DAYS AND HOURS! DAYS AND HOURS!
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Basically all I mean is that if anyone tries to tell me Arcanum and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines weren't amazing I'll shit down their neck.
Vampire jumped immediately to my head as I was reading Dimmukane's posts.
True story, I've probably played through Vampire more than any other game I've ever owned, I probably played it through 3 or 4 times before I even started putting mods in.
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Everybody who calls the Isabela mod racist is a pansy
Anyway, I love darkies, you fag
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Arcanum was big potential and small payoff, dude
And I disagree! Game was broken to high hell, in both errors and game design flaws, but it was still probably one of the best worlds I've played through. Had a hell of a lot of problems you had to deal with in order to experience it but well worth it as far as I'm concerned.
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Hey, question for you though: in the Xbox 360 version can you set it so that your guys deal with their own attacks and leveling? The Mass Effect 2 demo had that setting, but still kept asking me to "tell Sally to use mind-smash" or whatever. I dunno if that was just for when it first came up so I'd lrn 2 play proprly, or if it was just lies. I'd consider picking this up cheap if I could avoid most of the micro-management bull-ess-hit.
(You can't edit the default face though? That's so weird. I thought it was a glitch in ME2 when BasicShep's skull sagged the instant you went into the customisation screen.)
Characters not under direct control of the player will attack normally with no problems, but the tactics system, such as it is, apparently has a lot of problems that have been present since the demo dropped. Some talents will be used as normal and some will be ignored, even if you specifically parse out the logic via the broken tactics system, but I can't really tell you which ones (as a general rule, the more basic the talent, the better the usage). If you set the game to casual you probably won't have many problems, busted AI or no.
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I hope that, one day, we get to hear Patton Oswalt as a dwarf.
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THOUGHTS ON AN ENDING
- the sequence where you are forced into a binary choice was annoying – what if i hate both of them, for example? – but the way they rope you into it was shocking and interesting.
- it's too bad the subsequent boss fights are so lacklustre. also why even bother HAVING class-specific loot in the final couple of battles?
- in all, i actually really appreciated the framing device. and on the whole, i think the story was fairly clever – the episodes are well-thought out in terms of their actual arc, and there are neat little parallels and echoes and reverberations of all these socio-political tensions in the world that happen to come to heads at several moments. the considerations of ordinary people in this world are in a constant interplay with each other. i think their understanding of their own world, even if they've turfed it a bit with the design and approach to this game, is still secure enough and thorough enough that they can do some occasionally very wonderful things with it.
- but the pacing was like way fucking off pretty much the whole game. it stumbles and lurches where, even in its most grindy bits, DA:O walked confidently. not to mention where mass effect 2 fuckin' strutted. the game felt lumpy and disproportionate a lot of the time.
- y'know, i'm really crushed that you never actually get a chance to explore the gallows in-depth. the whole game you're told how dreadful it is – why not just let us see the place?
- i miss ferelden y'all
- by the end i was rigging up some custom tactics. nothing fancy but tweaking some settings so anders would cast haste immediately upon entering battle wound up being a good idea since it could turn my party into a crazy killing machine. it's a bit broken but you can make it work in your favour for sure.
- the end of act II, in retrospect, felt like the real climax of the game. but act III and the ending didn't feel unfinished or necessarily unsatisfying. they're missing a denouement but the narrative wraps up at a point where it kind of makes sense to wrap it up? it's just unfortunate that they did it with a cutscene, mostly, and not an overly elegant one at that.
i have problems with it especially in terms of how constrictive and bland kirkwall and its environs are (sundermount: gaming's most boring mountain?) and i have a few problems with the writing (especially how the conversation wheel sometimes isn't really honest about the kind of thing hawke's going to say, which has led me to some seriously gritted teeth, and also how a lot of conversations don't actually change that much based on yr responses) but i also had fun with the game and i've already started a female warrior playthough (she's tough and doesn't take shit! and also looks like an anime) so that i think stands for something. not as good as origins but fun enough.
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On a scale of One to The Witcher?
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- the sequence where you are forced into a binary choice was annoying – what if i hate both of them, for example? – but the way they rope you into it was shocking and interesting.
It's kind of a wonder they presented a choice at all, considering the endgame is exactly the same in both cases.
What did you think of Anders' twist? And the "social themes" it and the mage/templar conflict were supposed to present?
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haven't played the witcher! ~console gaming~
anders' twist was startling (although not entirely unexpected due to his last loyalty quest), although if you're asking me to draw parallels to the real world i don't think it's clear enough to do so? i'd rather not grasp at straws. in terms of the game world, it's really starkly different from how mages and templars interacted in ferelden and so like it was vaguely upsetting that the endgame said that it had an effect on all circles across thedas since conditions are obviously different.
basically all i know is that next game is gonna probably be full of blood mages and apostates and i'm gonna roll my eyes any time i see someone with a staff
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You didn't feel just a twinge when the... solution was proposed?
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I didn't because we were butt buddies. :I
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Not that solution! The Templar's solution to the Mage Problem.
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of course, but i felt the same twinge in DA:O when it was proposed. the right of annulment isn't new to DA2! and i know the specific historical analogue you're trying to tie it to but i'm not nearly certain enough that it's meant to evoke that and that alone.
(you'll also note in the codex and in DA:O that the right of annulment has been enacted more than once, too, which like if you're proposing that the solution to the mage problem is one with a certain air of, er, finality to it then that leaves those previous events out in the lurch)
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That's all fair, I just felt like the terminology they used was really heavy handed, and they were specifically trying to evoke those parallels, which, I felt like they were punching way above their weight class with the quality of the story up to that point, there was just no way to make it work.
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Isn't that almost the same though as when, in Mass Effect 2, Legion states that he has "found another solution to the Heretic question."?
That particular part kind of made me be a bit "Woah, okay guys, let's step back here."
So I guess this would be Bioware retreading old ground? I'd imagine it's purposefully done, that particular choice of terminology is, I think, pretty sure to evoke that kind of connotation.
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Sort of, but even with Legion's explanation of Geth consciousness they're still pretty much just machines / space orc cannon fodder. The Mages in DA2 are clearly set up as an oppressed minority throughout the game even as Gaider seemed weirdly intent on proving correct everything the Templars claim about them (mainly, that they're all blood mages and will turn into bloodthirsty monsters at the slightest discomfort or annoyance).
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True, but he then goes on to claim that it's the Templars extreme methods of controlling mages is driving them to blood magic so it's kind of a circular issue. What I want to know is what moron decided Kirkwall, a place where the veil is so thin it could be sundered by a mage sneezing too hard, was a good place to build a circle of magi? Really?
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/copypasta'd response from different forum 8D
Funny how the butthurts on the Bioware boards make Yahtzee's review (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2978-Dragon-Age-II) seem moderate in comparison.
As much as I think he made a few mountains from anthills, it's what Zero Punctuation does, and while I certainly enjoyed Dragon Age II a freakin lot, he does bring up a couple points about the game which I would agree with. Other points not so much, but things like repetitive environments and odd story structure did stand out to me. Also he probably played the console version.
Interesting how he didn't mind the characters and the banter, as I know a lot of haters who loathed the companion roster for this game.
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(http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/1235421064_tKdsS-L.jpg)
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True, but he then goes on to claim that it's the Templars extreme methods of controlling mages is driving them to blood magic so it's kind of a circular issue. What I want to know is what moron decided Kirkwall, a place where the veil is so thin it could be sundered by a mage sneezing too hard, was a good place to build a circle of magi? Really?
It's also odd that they would place the Circle in the middle of a major urban center.
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Meanwhile, Dragon Age II is too different for Rock Paper Shotgun, and they can't handle how differently awesome it is (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/31/analysis-dragon-age-ii/).
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Definitely the best review I've seen yet elucidating the game's failures.
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I hope that Bioware is listening to all this stuff. The DA setting is quite interesting, would hate to see 3 come out more like 2 than the original. I might buy 2 once it is like, $20 or something in the bargain bin and it's had time for them to patch up all the bugs, but it's definitely not worth my money otherwise.
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Waiting for the complete/ultimate edition at $30.
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It'll be interesting, considering how hit-and-miss Bioware's DLC has been.
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Well I think at least they can argue that "give us time to finish the game" and then point at this if told to keep to a stricter schedule.
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I just found out that DA2 runs really well on the new 13" MBPs. Piracy is looking very tempting.
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The ridiculously huge range of critical responses to this game is going to make my head explode
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Its a very divisive game I'll give it that.
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So check your emails because they are giving away Mass Effect 2 PC download codes to anyone who bought Dragon Age 2.
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how nice
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Pity it won't mean jack shit since I already have ME2
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A defense of DA2, from a dude who was paid to create media for it.
Dragon Age II is firmly, deeply situated "in the bag" at this point, completion time thirty six hours or so, and the experience has been completely bizarre. As the resident Lore Hound, and indeed, for any person who knows what a Thedas is, there is a substantial quantity of aged narrative beef present. Cultural stuff barely hinted at by Origins' inclusion of Sten takes center stage, bolstered by ecstatic writing (that's ecstatic, definition 2) that has an entire alien culture as its payload.
The thing that people are never trying to impart from the conception of an RPG is micro-managerial combat. I say this as someone who likes that and would start a foundation to preserve it. That's what Dragon Age is about, essentially. They have a challenge ahead of them; generally speaking, people don't make games like this anymore, not at this tier of development, and there is a reason.
We have expectations about what an RPG is that are deeply, deeply at odds with the way the industry currently works. It is our expectation that we will purchase a forty hour game, or a sixty hour game, or a hundred hour game for the same price that we purchase a game that lasts four to six hours. BioWare has tried to chart a course for the franchise that is remotely fucking possible in the current environment. They're up to their elbows in some pretty sacred zones, and the result has been confusion and rage. It's full of experiments, though, some brilliant and some less so, but I'm wired to think of even failed experiments as progress.
The way these games are "supposed" to go, expressed both by ancient CRPGs and the more modern Mass Effect series, is that you follow a single character's journey through multiple discrete chapters.Dragon Age II confounds this in what I think is an interesting way: they are not telling the story of an individual person, or even a group of people. You would get the impression from DA that this was a game about "The Grey Wardens" and "The Blight," the way that ME is about "The Spectres" and "The Reapers," but you don't have to play that game long to understand that it isn't entirely true. It's actually a story about the people and the power structures of a particular time. Dragon Age II cements that these games are about the world itself: yes, it remembers your old character, and the effect you had, but not just in a localized way: your effect on the motion of history.
Do people like that as well? Generally speaking, I would say no; it's a pretty high concept play. They chose a very peculiar moment to focus on, here: something that would have been a cross-media piece, or an animated short, or a tie-in anywhere else gets the front page. I will tell you that it will be fascinating, beyond fascinating, to see how this tumult crystallizes into the DLC. They have been "given" an incredible, nearly unprecedented opportunity.
Also! Patch info. Should be available very soon.
The 1.02 Patch on PC/Mac (1.01 Title Update on X360/PS3) is still in the final certification process with EA, Microsoft, and Sony but is not expected to come out this weekend. Thank you for your continued patience and we look forward to getting this in your hands soon.
The patch includes fixes for over 100 issues. We’ll discuss some of the platform-specific issues in greater detail next week and we’ll release the formal patch notes once the updates are actually ready to download and install but here’s a high level view of some of the core gameplay fixes that everyone will see regardless of platform:
- The effects of various follower talents and item properties are now being properly removed and re-applied when loading and saving.
- Party members who are resurrected during a fight now rejoin combat properly.
- Hawke no longer gains random spells or talents after using the Maker's Sigh potion, then saving and reloading.
- The “Duty” plot will now appear on the Chanter’s Board even if the player accepted all of the board’s quests before installing the Exiled Prince premium content.
- In the “Finders Keepers” plot, if the player leaves Woodrow’s Warehouse before finding the crate, it is now possible to return to the warehouse to complete the quest.
- Merril no longer refers to the aftermath of “A New Path” before the plot has been completed.
- Aveline’s final armor upgrade is now available during the “Favor and Fault” plot.
- Varric is no longer confused about which character Hawke has been romancing.
- Various other gameplay and story-scripting issues no longer appear.
We’ll delve into some of the platform-specific details early next week. In the meantime, a special shout out and thanks to our mighty beta test group who’ve been a big help in confirming how these fixes will behave in the wild.
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Meanwhile, bitmob makes... something?
I kicked in the door to BioWare's office like a boss. It swung wide, nearly crumpling from the force of my Adidas shoe. I strode in and took stock of the situation. BioWare was sitting at his desk, flabbergasted; his gold-wire spectacles were locked on me. He had changed since the last time we spoke.
Gone was his once well-kept Merlin beard. In its place was now a scraggily mess of facial hair. His glasses were taped in the middle and his skin tone implied he hadn't seen sunlight in months. Above his computer station on the far wall was a black surveillance camera, which I could only imagine was EA keeping an eye on their most prized possession.
"Rick, what are you doing here?" BioWare asked, startled.
I shoved BioWare's guest chair aside so I could stare down at him.
"I'm taking a break from my beef with Hollywood to figure out what the hell is going on with my favorite developer. Believe me, I'd rather be out there now fighting the good fight instead of being here in Edmonton. I hate Edmonton." My tone was harsh. The only Canadian city less interesting than Edmonton was Calgary, and I had just driven through Calgary.
"W-what do you mean? Everything is going well. Dragon Age 2 sold a lot of-"
"Dragon Age 2 sucks," I cut him off curtly.
"How can you say that? Well, what about The Arrival DLC? You're big on Mass Effect ... did you play it?" he asked curiously.
"The Arrival is why I'm here. It was the tipping point. You got a 5.0 on Gamespot. The last time Mass Effect DLC did this poorly was Pinnacle Station." I stepped back and started pacing the room. BioWare sat silently. I had his full attention now.
"You guys never put out crap, but lately that's slipped. All it takes are a few more screw-ups before the forums transform into a dangerous lynch mob. Witch Hunt was somewhat forgivable seeing how new Dragon Age was at the time. Then Dragon Age 2 came out and it hurt all of us ... like a piece of chicken not fully cooked. You know it's not a sequel. It's a damn side story."
BioWare stood up, having had enough of my remarks. "It is a direct sequel! Dragon Age has never been about just one character. It's about the world and the conflicts within it. Mike Laidlaw has been telling people as such. Did you somehow miss the interview at 1UP?"
I waited until he was finished before I roared in reply, "You recycled a bunch of environments! That is never ever okay! It's not an open world game like Assassin's Creed where the setting is an evolving playground. It's Dragon Age, a game about epic quests, dragon slaying, and deep stories people can get lost in. If you had planned to release it like this, why didn't you call it Dragon Age: Hawke Does Stuff. At least then I could've stomached it. "
I regained some of my composure. "Anyway, Dragon Age: The Kirkwall Marathon isn't why I'm here. I'm here because you committed the cardinal sin against me. You hurt me bad, man." I resumed pacing, trying to refocus my rage.
"What did I do?" BioWare asked, clearly exasperated by my presence.
I stopped and considered my words. Then I had it. "For the first time ever you completely separated me from my Commander Shepard. I wish I hadn't played The Arrival. I wish I could undo my memory of it. I was with Shepard for most of it, but then you offered her what seemed like a gigantic moral decision. Then, before I could blink, you forced her into it without my consent. The connection I had built up over the years was gone in an instant, severed by your heavy hand."
BioWare sighed. "We had to do something. We couldn't just let the player walk into Mass Effect 3 without any context. That's what The Arrival does ... that's what that decision does. It sets up the final installment."
"At what cost?" I snapped, "I felt like Shepard and I had an accord. I trusted your narrative strings. You had me, and then you kicked me in the balls like I had stolen your bike because you couldn't think of a better way to write your way out of a corner. Where's the justice? Where's the simple decency?"
BioWare sighed. His head turned to glance at the camera behind him.
"It's them, isn't it?" I asked brazenly, "They have you by your pointy beard, demanding profits. Look, every decent gamer worth his salt understands you got to make a buck to feed your families. We will gladly open our wallets to partake in the wonderful experiences this industry is known for. Just, please, don't make us regret it by changing your ways now."
I stared into BioWare’s worldly eyes, seeing the wisdom swirling underneath.
“Establish boundaries. Stand by your product. But most of all stand by your narrative, man. That’s what you do. That’s what you’re known for. You take story seriously. You don’t needlessly tack it onto gameplay.”
My phone beeped. I glanced down. It was a text from the front lines. My eyes widened in horror.
“I gotta run, man. Hollywood has signed Mark Wahlberg and Uwe Boll to co-write the next two Uncharted movies.” I placed my hand gently on BioWare’s shoulder, glancing one last time at the camera.
“I know you won’t let us down again. I believe in you. The next game you release will be epic, and when they try to take credit, we’ll know it was you all along.”
With that I backed out of his office and closed the door quietly behind me. Deep down, I knew BioWare had heard me. I knew he wouldn’t hurt us again.
Sometime later I heard whispers that BioWare had cleaned up his beard. Apparently, the morning after I left, he broke the camera and declared, "Dragon Age 3 will take as long as it takes!"
I couldn’t help but smile.
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Tycho's an odd duck. He has a definite bias, but I don't believe it's entirely because of the money, his weird DLC enthusiasm notwithstanding. Rather, he's one of those people who constructs an experience that exists somewhat independently from the mechanics of whatever it is he is actually playing-- We are, after all, talking about the guy who still posts about Chromehounds, a game that had some fairly serious flaws beyond even the pricetag. Rather, as a lore nerd and someone who was actually invited to come over and muck about in the setting a bit, I think he enjoys Dragon Age on much the same level a GM plunders a good sourcebook. Meanwhile, at the ranch, I don't write fiction for the setting, paid or otherwise, and I don't really give a shit about the Qunari. He has a pretty clear perspective on things, but he's still a setting fanboy and I am not. It creates a weird situation in which I believe many of his observations to be on point despite the fact that I lack even a tiny shred of his enthusiasm.
I will say one thing though: I didn't react to Dragon Age 2 with confusion. I understand what is going on, I just don't care for it. I feel much the same way about how Mars changed the king-size Snickers bar.
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Wait, Bioware's based in Edmonton? That explains a lot, they're all weirdos up there.
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They have different teams in different cities. I believe ME's team is in Montreal, DA's is in Edmonton, and SWTOR is based in Austin.
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Man, seriously, you're fucking questioning Tycho's motives of all goddamn people?
That's not even a defense. It's saying he's sad that the micro-managerial style of RPG gameplay is on its way out and he enjoys the higher concepts of Dragon Age. I don't see anywhere in there saying "Fuck the haters, DA2 was great." just "It tried to do something interesting."
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They have different teams in different cities. I believe ME's team is in Montreal, DA's is in Edmonton, and SWTOR is based in Austin.
What ever happened to Mythic?
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They have different teams in different cities. I believe ME's team is in Montreal, DA's is in Edmonton, and SWTOR is based in Austin.
What ever happened to Mythic?
Assisting with SWTOR, is the official line. Others are less charitable (https://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/hello-world/), but who even knows what's spite and what's truth there.
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Okay, Dragon Age II I can see people being annoyed with, but The Arrival?
Can't really see it from where I'm standing. And more butthurt about EA. Hooray. We never see that enough.
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What ever happened to Mythic?
I work with quite a few ex-Mythic people, actually. They mostly got split between a handful of studios, particularly the one I work at and Bioware.
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DA3 is reportedly in development presently, and it's going to have multiplayer. This from the rumors section of some mag.
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Multiplayer co-op with friends would be pretty rad.
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Patch out for PC, delayed a week for consoles
Hi everyone. I hope you had a good weekend. We're working with Valve right now on dotting the i's and crossing the t's for the Steam rollout. Based on our current estimates, we expect the 1.02 Patch to go live on PC/Mac sometime tomorrow (Tuesday, April 12).
On consoles, the 1.01 title update is progressing smoothly through final certification at Microsoft and Sony. No issues have been found and they're currently projecting release dates of sometime next week - we're working with them to see if we can pull those dates in any further.
Last Friday we discussed some of the universal fixes that we’ve made across all the platforms. Today we’re providing a high-level view of some of the platform-specific fixes that you can expect.
CONSOLES:
- The options menu now includes auto-attack.
- Armor values now adjust correctly when changing shields.
- Choosing a target at close range is now easier.
- Cinematics are no longer distorted on certain standard-definition televisions.
- Hawke no longer gains excessive coin and experience from rapidly and repeatedly completing a single sidequest.
- Various technical changes should improve performance, limit crashes, and address memory-related issues.
PC & MAC:
- Various issues specific to DirectX 11 no longer occur.
- It is now easier to select party members by clicking on their portraits when the level-up arrow is displayed.
- The game now functions correctly across different desktop sizes.
- The video options menu now allows a wider full-screen gamma range.
- Various technical changes should improve performance and limit crashes.
- We’ve improved our crash reporting and our ability to analyze those reports. If you’re still experiencing crashes, we encourage you to play logged in so we can identify and resolve your issues in the future.
This patch should address the bulk of the major issues that people are experiencing. We’re already hard at work on addressing further issues with our next patch and we’ll be setting up some specific threads in the various tech support forums to help capture any major issues that you’re still facing after these patches go live.
Cumulative Community Patchnotes
GAMEPLAY
The effects of various follower talents and item properties are now being properly removed and re-applied when loading and saving.
Anders's default set of tactics will now activate Haste when appropriate.
Aveline's final armor upgrade is now available during "Favor and Fault."
Aveline's Retaliation talent no longer imposes a delay when activated.
The warrior's Rally talent now functions as described.
The rogue's Lacerate talent now functions as described.
Party members who are resurrected during a fight now rejoin combat properly.
Hawke no longer gains random spells or talents after using the Maker's Sigh potion, then saving and reloading.
Potions, poisons, grenades, and runes can now still be ordered from the Hawke estate after the main campaign is complete.
Various minor gameplay issues no longer occur
the Enemy:Rank tactic no longer selects a new target and is now working on the PC version in the same way as on consoles
QUESTS (SPOILER WARNING)
'Who needs rescuing' is now functioning properly
"Duty" will now appear on the Chanter's Board even if the player accepted all of the board's quests before installing the Exiled Prince premium content.
The journal for "Duty" will now update if the player left the Docks (Night) area immediately after killing the Flint Company mercenaries.
In "Finders Keepers," the door to Woodrow's Warehouse will now open if the player steals the location to the warehouse from the harbormaster's office.
In "Finders Keepers," if the player leaves Woodrow's Warehouse before finding the crate, it is now possible to return to the warehouse to complete the quest.
In "Herbalist's Tasks," the varterral's heart is now available even if the player killed the varterral before receiving the quest.
Merrill no longer refers to the aftermath of "A New Path" before the plot has been completed.
Varric is no longer confused about which character Hawke has been romancing.
Various minor story-scripting issues no longer occur.
Import Functionality
"Finding Nathaniel" reads the flags properly if the Warden killed the Architect.
PC/MAC-SPECIFIC FUNCTIONALITY
Varric's Embellishment talent no longer incorrectly refers to movement speed.
It is now easier to select party members by clicking on their portraits when the level-up arrow is displayed.
The game now functions correctly if the Windows desktop is set to 150% size.
The video options menu now allows a wider full-screen gamma range.
Various issues specific to DirectX 11 no longer occur.
Various technical changes should improve performance and limit crashes.
Current issues, post 1.02:
GUI Elements are not aligned properly after installing 1.02 [confirmed]
Carver goes from Grey Warden to Templar in act 3 [unconfirmed]
Import issue with Zevran (all)
'Who Needs Rescuing' quest still broken in some cases
Modal abilities that should be exclusive are stacking if you toggle two of them on quickly
Merrill's 'Mourning' quest at the beginning of Act 2 is auto-completing. This quest is not supposed to be in the game so for now just disregard the message about it. (it does not affect your game at all)*
*After talking to the design team it was established that this quest was supposed to be cut from the game and somehow remnants of it stuck around in some fashion. Rest assure it has no affect on anything going forward (and even when it was in the game it was a very brief conversation with not plot modifying flags). Sorry for the confusion.
Current issues that require new playthroughs (or older saves) in 1.02
Merrill's 'Mourning' at the beginning of Act 2 is fixed but requires you to load from before entering The Deep Roads
Slo-mo hawke (as well as other stat modifiers) are not retroactively
fixed. The problem will not reoccur or get worse but whatever value you
currently have will be stuck with you for now (there are many helpful
threads about editting the save to manually fix the issue in the mean
time)
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You would have thought that that auto-attack would have been fixed by the very first significant patch and prioritized to do it but I guess beggars can't be choosers.
Despite having played about 90 hours of Dragon Age II now, I don't think I ever bothered doing Herbalist's Tasks. Barring everything else in the game, that one was a blatant insignificant fetch quest with a whole lot of shitty trawling enemies' corpses for some random guy in Hightown.
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You can do it pretty handily if you get other quests that make you go to those places anyway. Though that wounded coast flower was a bitch to find.
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hahaha what? all the herbalist's tasks thing were like right out in the open. there's not even places on the maps for anything to hide.
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No he's right. There's a particular gathering quest that seems to break if you complete Merrill's recruitment quest before you activate it. There's a quest marker going into the mountain but it doesn't actually lead you anywhere. I think that was the only one, though.
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weird. i didn't have trouble with it on my first go-round. then again the forbidden knowledge quest or whatever busted on me and i literally couldn't get at one of the books so like ugh whatever they gotta patch this mess right away
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Oh, I think I actually nearly completed it the first time around, but then I think there's another one of those quests in the 3rd act as well as the 2nd and well, I just couldn't be arsed, really.
Also I gathered up all my junk and stashed it for endgame selling, and guess what?
I had 4 sovereigns worth of junk in my stash by the end of the game
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A couple of fairly interesting things to read re: Dragon Age 2. Guy loves DA2, likens it to 3 act stage play (http://geraldonascimento.net/i-am-garrett-hawke-champion-of-kirkwall/). Endlessly recycled environs are totally brilliant, dudes. Also, a thing about Isabela as "empowered woman" (http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/138484-the-sisterhood-of-the-traveling-pantsless-rogue-dragon-age-iis-isabe/). Also, a thing on unreliable narrators (http://criticalmissive.blogspot.com/2011/04/wait-thats-not-what-happened-discussion.html). Via Gamasutra's essential criticism roundup.
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hahaha what? all the herbalist's tasks thing were like right out in the open. there's not even places on the maps for anything to hide.
Most of them where kill this thing and harvest it's corpse sorta deals. Except for that damn flower.(I didn't mind it too much though, it felt less like I was getting spoon fed everything)
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Just installed with updates, when I get a chance I'll mod and track down dlc that'll work on OS X (seriously, the stuff I could find was .exe).
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Alrighty, mod time. I'm going to install the one that gives isabella some pants, DA:O save generator (don't have my old saves, a bloo bloo), Chargen Revamp and the pineapple mods. Any worthy texture packs or game mods?
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Not that I'm aware of. Most mods seem to be reskin mods and, well, you know what those are gonna look like.
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--- Icy Magebane wrote... Dude... come on... that poster's not even out of line in saying that. Isn't it enough that every companion is bisexual? That the Blooming Rose is like 90% male prostitutes? That the gay romances seem to be far deeper experiences than the straight ones (meaning, one of the two choices for a male PC is a promiscuous woman who tries to get with Zevran right in front of you... thanks)? Do we really need scantily clad or even naked male demons on top of all that?
Now look, I have no problem with homosexuals, but honestly, let's not go crazy here... there's a such thing as too much. This isn't even about equality anymore... DA2 is totally biased towards homosexuality in terms of quality romantic experiences. Now you're just piling on the pain... almost punishing people for being straight. ---
Uh-huh.
Ignoring the fact that I wasn't actually serious about the male desire demon, let me point out that the game is in no way biased towards homosexuality. I hate constantly bringing up the word privilege, but when it applies so well it's hard not to use. Someone else getting more does not equate to you getting less, simply because you're accustomed to having it all to yourself. I get that not everyone digs the romance options-- really that's always going to be the case-- but you needn't feel so threatened you see an agenda behind it.
Because, yes, God forbid there be a scantily-clad, sexualized male demon existing as a counterpart to the scantily-clad, sexualized female demon. I mean, objectifying men as well as women? Whoa! Let's not get crazy or anything. There might be someone out there who finds that attractive-- and by that I mean a man, because what straight women want is irrelevant-- and that would be gay.
Sorry, but I'm not sure the argument you're making is the one you think it is.
--- The Sum of all Evil wrote...
Yes, it is. By making homosexuality (almost) as prevalent as heterosexuality you in fact bias it (the setting) towards homosexuality. Which, of course, is your decision. Just as it is anyome's decision to buy the game or not. ---
The setting is not biased towards homosexuality.
The game has more options for players who wish access to homosexual content, at their option. That does not mean it's everywhere in the world-- unless perhaps you're seeing it in many more places than it actually exists, I can't really account for your perceptions. Regardless, having something equally prevalent (as you yourself imply) does not make it biased by definition.
As for someone deciding to buy the game or not-- if that's an implied threat, by all means it is indeed correct that everyone is free to base their purchasing on whatever criteria they like. Even if that's the existence of content they aren't interested in or don't wish to use. Maybe it makes you feel uncomfortable? I imagine there's a lot of content in a mature-rated game like ours that could make someone feel uncomfortable, and quite frankly we don't install toggles for any of it.
Insofar as purchasing goes, however, I can easily imagine there being just as much economic value in providing content for a small but underserviced market as there is in providing content for a large but overserviced one... but that would be a bit logical leap to make no matter which way you look at it, as I'm certain the reasons people buy games is usually not so focused on a single issue.
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The way these guys carry on with their complaints they seem a little bit butthurt :mrgreen: over the very idea that there's an equal homosexual presence at all.
Thanks for making David Gaider look good, fellas!
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Whoa what I think I missed out on the scantily clad male demon.
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IGN provides a trainwreck defense in response to a trainwreck criticism:
Tom Bissell, journalist and author of Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, described Dragon Age: Origins as "boner-killing." I didn't play the game but I know what he meant. It seemed to have been assembled like an encyclopedia, an arrangement of attributes, stats, skills, factions, proclivities, and magical fancy. A design that comprehensive and obscure can still prickle my fur, but there's something about high fantasy that sends my game phallus into the hammock. I don't mind delayed gratification, but it takes more than an old man in a robe talking about dwarves and mystic jewelry to keep me interested. So then, I really didn't want to play Dragon Age 2.
... I kept wondering when I would unlock the quest where the lurking Satanic threat to the world would finally be revealed. There's no comet coming into orbit? There's no steroid Satan trying to reanimate himself? No shriveled king building a super weapon? No, no, and no. Instead the game is a sprawl of co-equals, various races with their own self-centered interests. Dwarves want money and a return to the glory of their older days, elves mistrust the petty corruptions of human city life, mages don't like the militaristic templars, and the templars think the mages are all closet jihadists. Then there are these strange things called Qunari, which actually are steroid Satan types. They're not exactly demonic, rather they just have horns and red skin and operate on a plane of reason without room for emotion or passion.
During moments like these Dragon Age 2 is at its best, not as a fantasy game but as a dilemma simulator. The most powerful moments are small envelopes of time when someone offered me a choice of whom to betray, knowing that both sides had reason to be saved or punished. It's a game about me, in that way, and not at all about dwarves, elves, or bejeweled old men in robes.
As finely charted as its dialogue and story decisions are, Dragon Age 2 has a dull underbelly in its combat. BioWare is stingily holding onto a vision of combat taken from the dark days of PC game design, when a phrase like "damage per second" could be taken seriously. In the days of Baldur's Gate you watched your characters from above, delighting as they drained numbers from enemies in minutely varied ways. The crucial metric was time, and so combat proficiency became a kind of SAT test for wizards. You'd have to balance the hit points you could extract from enemies each second against the amount of stamina or mana you had, how much damage your characters could take, and how long you could postpone total depletion with healing items.
The great innovation in Dragon Age 2 is that you're no longer looking down on your characters but are now tethered to them with an over-the-shoulder camera angle. Which is to say BioWare has made a superficial change to presentation as a way of covering for the fact that the system is still the same basic design as it was all those years ago. As a number balancing game it's satisfying in the same way that Sudoku is, but it really shouldn't have a place in a story game about moral equivalencies. It's got an opaque but machine-like efficiency that contradicts the theme of moral grayness.
There is a basic conflict between an action-based combat game and a group tactics game. You can freeze the action at any point, bringing up a radial menu that can be used to quaff potions, attack, cast buffs, or issue movement commands. While the game is paused you can switch back and forth between all four of your characters to give them specific commands. Have Anders heal, have Varrick launch his area-wide attack, have Merrill use Despell, and then start everything moving again. This about as sexy as negotiating a mid-coital position change. You put your leg over here, twist on your side ninety degrees, put your hand up here, now let me wiggle my hips over just so. It's like fighting about architecture, though with at least enough kink to include a dwarf.
A braver design choice would have been to excise combat all together, or at least cut ties with a ten year-old mouse and keyboard model built for a chess-style abstraction of humans in conflict. There are moments when Dragon Age 2 is so off-putting I have no idea of why I'm playing it. The hour spent fighting a high dragon again and again, wondering why my little friends in the TV don't get out of the way when a fireball's coming their way can feel like such a thorough waste, time spent feeding bits of my life and energy into a cold and unresponsive machine.
These are, indeed, boner-killing moments, and they're no less prevalent in Dragon Age 2 than they were in Origins. But they're grating and pained precisely because they were preceded by something subtle and personal, something reactive to my own uncertainties about right, wrong, loyalty, duty, love, and sacrifice. Nothing deflates the promise of those moments more than a mechanical whack-em-up gone off the rails. Yet few games are as good at sweet talking their way back into my pants. When it works I love the careful attention to my own mixed moral feelings, and when it doesn't all I see is the awkward stupidity of dwarves, blood magic, and all the other crap I had thought was a turn-on just a few minutes earlier.
Tom Bissell claimed he was addicted to video games and cocaine, in that order.
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Man there is nothing about that article that isn't wrong.
I didn't play the game
Ladies and gentlemen, IGN.
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So he's basically saying that Dragon Age should be more like... Modern Warfare? That they didn't simplify the RPG elements enough? I mean, the simple fact that they cut out inventory management for NPCs is one of the single biggest reasons for me not playing this (the biggest reason being the demo). If you smack talk Baldur's Gate for the way the combat management worked, you're probably not someone who should be reviewing party based rpgs, as it's pretty clear that you just don't like them. At all.
And how the fuck do you take keyboard and mouse out of a computer game? How do you do anything on a computer without it being an abstraction to a certain degree?
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OK now I'm not much of an RPG person so you'll have to excuse me if this is wildly misinformed but that just seemed to me like he was describing an RPG. Any RPG. And acting like this is something that's wrong with Dragon Age specifically. That it's an RPG.
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that's basically his argument, yeah
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for all DA2's flaws, the bigger boner-killing moment was probably in the first game (by which i mean when leilana transformed into a horrid corpse-mannequin and sang her stupid song)
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I think I repressed the memory of watching that.
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After seeing the youtube video of that, I'm very relieved that I never used her in the first game.
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So, I just met the Arishok:
(http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/comics/2011-04-18.jpg)
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I dunno what to say about the IGN thing. There are one or two things there that I actually agree with, but the fact that he hasn't played any Dragon Age game makes his observations pretty moot
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I'm pretty sure the dude played DA2, just not DA:O. If not, he has a pretty fantastic knowledge of various piddling details in DA2 for someone who never played it!
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Manly Men Doing Manly Things is possibly the best thing on the internet at the moment.
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she's kind of a hypocrite for calling him a hipster though, considering she was mocking everyone else for doing so.
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I hat you Gamlen. We have a meaningful moment and then you go ahead and say something like: "I hear you've moved the apostate boy into the house. I guess I don't have to ask which one of you's the girl."
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There's maybe a difference between calling everything a giraffe and making a joke that something actually looks like a giraffe.
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It seemed way more snide than slyly humourous.
The Circle really needs reformation, starting with Mage Health classes on Blood Magic (incl. necromancy and making deals with demons). If you don't do it responsibly or even do it all, you will most likely die. As soon as they get a foothold in your mind they'll steal your body and ride that husk around like a drunken teenager in a stolen sports car. Then a hero comes a long and slays it.
Then there's the other part. The Templars/Chantry lock you up because they believe all mages are all evil blood mages and are a threat to their hegemony over the non-magical people. The innocent mages then turn to blood magic to fight their oppression only to become evil abominations void-bent on throwing the wildest house party ever, thus validating the Templar/Chantry's beliefs causing the cycle to repeat with the occasional genocidal Rite of Annulment. The First-Enchanter's final act only reinforced this further (way to be an example, Orsino)
When I was tracking blood mages at some point, Anders mentioned something about saving these mages from their own stupidity. This went from pointed to pointless as soon as he did that entirely stupid and thoroughly unnecessary thing in the third act.
(Full Disclosure: sided with the mages)
The very short development cycle + and the conceited 3 years later thing hurt the writing the most, imo. There's an entire library worth of issues that I'm sure anyone who's played the game has recognised. I expect a good deal from Bioware's writing staff so this game was a personal disappointment (less so than Golden Sun, the biggest let down of a game I played this year) and I don't care anywhere near enough to play it again anytime soon. That said, a bad Bioware RPG is still a slightly better than average game.
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One thing you'll miss if you don't regularly read the codex is that the Circle of Mages is housed in the Gallows, where tens of thousands of people died in terror and bondage over centuries. This makes the barrier between Thedas and the Veil dangerously thin throughout (might as well throw some Stephen Kingi-y "places have memories" mythology in there, why not). That, and the fact that the Circle is housed in the heart of a major urban center, makes the Kirkwall Chantry a coterie of incredible, humongous retards.
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It's a shame because the Grand Cleric seemed to be the most reasonable voice in the entire frickin game.
EDIT: Or at least, the most understanding one. Which is why Anders comes off as the biggest twat at the end.
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The fallout is more heavy handed than God Loves, Man Kills.
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One thing you'll miss if you don't regularly read the codex is that the Circle of Mages is housed in the Gallows, where tens of thousands of people died in terror and bondage over centuries. This makes the barrier between Thedas and the Veil dangerously thin throughout (might as well throw some Stephen Kingi-y "places have memories" mythology in there, why not). That, and the fact that the Circle is housed in the heart of a major urban center, makes the Kirkwall Chantry a coterie of incredible, humongous retards.
yeah, it's also reinforced constantly that the circle in kirkwall is something of a special case among circles because of this. i mean, contrast it with the one in ferelden, which was out in the sticks and also in the middle of a huge lake. the "all mages aren't this bad" dialogue option that constantly comes up is really accurate – with the veil as thin as it is in the gallows (and at the bone pit, and at sundermount, and because of how the tevinter imperium has always been run by magisters), it kind of makes sense that they'd be more subject to inducement from spirits, and it also kind of makes sense that the templars would behave psychotically, since ingesting lyrium attunes templars to the veil.
but you're right in that orsino's decision to turn was, like, completely ridiculous and forced in the "side with mages" ending, and you (and ser cullen!) are right in that, like, the circles across thedas really, really needed to step up their game w/r/t instructing their charges on why consorting with demons is a really bad idea. like did these mages learn absolutely nothing from their harrowing
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Well that's kind of an iffy point considering that, as far as DA:O was concerned, you needed to make an explicit contract with a spirit in the Fade in order to be possessed (fitting with classic "caveat emptor" mythology, and explaining how hard it is to gain the Blood Mage specialization in DA:O). If the membrane to the Fade is so thin in Kirkwall that even mages who haven't made pacts can be possessed whenever they experience anger / distress (which is apparently the case), you'd think the Chantry would go Chernobyl on the place and seal it off forever.
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that's fair, plus blood magic seems to be just like, "yeah cut yourself somewhere and the blood comes out + is magic"
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so half-baked
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(http://i55.tinypic.com/dmbo8g.jpg)
Meanwhile!
(http://i.imgur.com/5N0iW.png)
Not to suggest anything beyond this, but if one is going to compare the sales of the two games one might also wish to take into account the fact that Origins was released shortly before Christmas. Beyond that, whatever extrapolations you wish to make are up to you.
I'm just saying that if one is looking for data to serve as proof of anything other than confirmation bias, you might want to take more factors into account. I recognize that some folks are going to take any statement by a developer that isn't a mea culpa as some kind of "denial of the truth", but I'd say we're well aware of how DA2 is selling and how much of a success or failure that is for our company and Dragon Age's future potential. Whether the lesson we've learned is the one you think it should be will remain to be seen, I guess. Hopefully so.
Poor dear!
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I liked the loading screens and Kirkwall basically had a very solid art direction.
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midway through my third run-through (as a mage this time) and after this i'm trading the game in which i like rarely ever do
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EA Insider Deals (http://www.facebook.com/EAInsiderDeals) on Facebook is offering DA & DA: II for 50% off today if they get enough 'LIKES' by this afternoon. Free shipping.
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Turns out if you pester Sandel enough and grit your teeth through the Full Retard jokes, he drops what might be hints about DA3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwa-mKETJW0&feature=related).
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It's the child isn't it?
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they might fix their missteps in da3 but you too can now do that from the comfort of your own home (http://greenronin.com/2011/06/dragon_age_rpg_quickstart_guid.php)