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[satsugaikaze]

Pity it won't mean jack shit since I already have ME2

[KvP]

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.

[KvP]

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.

[Alex C]

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.

[David_Dovey]

Wait, Bioware's based in Edmonton? That explains a lot, they're all weirdos up there.

[KvP]

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.

[Ozymandias]

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."

[Tom]

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?

[KvP]

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, but who even knows what's spite and what's truth there.

[satsugaikaze]

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.

[Dimmukane]

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.

[KvP]

DA3 is reportedly in development presently, and it's going to have multiplayer. This from the rumors section of some mag.

[est]

Multiplayer co-op with friends would be pretty rad.

[KvP]

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)

[satsugaikaze]

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.

[JD]

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.

[Johnny C]

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.

[KvP]

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.

[Johnny C]

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

[satsugaikaze]

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

[KvP]

A couple of fairly interesting things to read re: Dragon Age 2. Guy loves DA2, likens it to 3 act stage play. Endlessly recycled environs are totally brilliant, dudes. Also, a thing about Isabela as "empowered woman". Also, a thing on unreliable narrators. Via Gamasutra's essential criticism roundup.

[JD]

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)

[Tom]

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).

[Tom]

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?

[KvP]

Not that I'm aware of. Most mods seem to be reskin mods and, well, you know what those are gonna look like.

[KvP]

--- 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.

[satsugaikaze]

The way these guys carry on with their complaints they seem a little bit butthurt over the very idea that there's an equal homosexual presence at all.

Thanks for making David Gaider look good, fellas!

[JD]

Whoa what I think I missed out on the scantily clad male demon.

[KvP]

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.

[KvP]

Man there is nothing about that article that isn't wrong.

I didn't play the game

Ladies and gentlemen, IGN.

[snalin]

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?

[David_Dovey]

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.

[Johnny C]

that's basically his argument, yeah

[Johnny C]

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)

[JD]

I think I repressed the memory of watching that.

[snalin]

After seeing the youtube video of that, I'm very relieved that I never used her in the first game.

[Tom]

So, I just met the Arishok:

[satsugaikaze]

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

[David_Dovey]

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!

[cyro]

Manly Men Doing Manly Things is possibly the best thing on the internet at the moment.

[JD]

she's kind of a hypocrite for calling him a hipster though, considering she was mocking everyone else for doing so.

[Tom]

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."

[Ozymandias]

There's maybe a difference between calling everything a giraffe and making a joke that something actually looks like a giraffe.

[Tom]

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.

[KvP]

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.

[satsugaikaze]

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.

[Tom]

The fallout is more heavy handed than God Loves, Man Kills.

[Johnny C]

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

[KvP]

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.

[Johnny C]

that's fair, plus blood magic seems to be just like, "yeah cut yourself somewhere and the blood comes out + is magic"