entrerix

ok, played this for about 10 hours DA2: My initial thoughts. Not as different from DAO as ME2 was from ME1. The problem is, I liked 90% of the changes they made for ME2, while for DA2, I only like about 50% of the changes. Start with the bad first cause its more fun to bash: HATE the camera, it won't let me pull back to get a strategic view of the field, for absolutely no reason that I can understand. I am eagerly awaiting a mod to fix this. I'm only ten hours in and I've gone into the EXACT same cave 3 times, I honestly can't think of a game I've played with lazier dungeon design. (note i said lazy, not bad, more on that later...) Im only ten hours in and I'm already bored of kirkwall, this isnt purely a DA2 problem though, I got bored of athkatla just as fast, i like a lot of variety in my environment, even if its just 1 city (i never have gotten bored with Sigil) now onto the good: dialogue and characters are on par with DAO, take that for what you will. I mostly liked that stuff in DAO, and I mostly like it here. Varric is my favorite npc so far, which is odd because I was expecting to hate him. Fenris is a tool so far. combat: its actually more fun than DAO. Not because its actiony excitement (though it is a slight improvement in this new style) but mostly because the dungeons are more frequent but SHORTER, and the encounters aren't as long and tedious. Enemies do more damage and so do you, so fights are over faster 80% of the time. It also helps that I have built my party into a pure offensive blitz team. It might not work on hard or nightmare, but on normal having 2 warriors wielding twohanders for crowds, and a wizard and a rogue focused on spiking, lets me just whip through encounters so fast that my party barely has time to get hurt before the enemies are down. I've still died a couple of times, mostly when I accidentally let my mage get surrounded, but generally, normal is really easy. I will play on hard next time. ALSO: I completely agree with azure's write up of how combat works. Its actually a lot more fun than DAO cone of cold = win button. dungeon design: its pretty strange, the environments are copy-paste hack jobs that make me mad at either insanely lazy designers, or more likely, an insanely rushed product. However, because the dungeons so far are much shorter, and the encounters go much faster, than in DAO, I haven't been struck with the combat fatigue that made DAO so borderline-unplayable on second and third runthroughs. The real test here again will be if I can do a second or third playthrough without getting bored though, because DAO was awesome my first time through it and I suffered very little dungeon fatigue. that was pretty rambling, sorry. tldr: after 10 hours the game seems about as good as DAO, just different in some ways. edit: some thoughts on the streamlining: not actually that bad in this game, but as a trend I'm sick of it. developers need to start making games for adults who have been playing games for 20 years and dont just rent them from blockbuster to play with their friends at sleepovers.

AC2 and brotherhood are also way better than part 1, and I LIKED AC 1.

i miss simple disc check. i personally dont mind steam, but can see how its a deal breaker for some, and really the disc check is fine, it keeps joe simple tardo from just installing his game and then loaning the disc off to someone else to install, but it doesnt bother the majority of customers. and those it does bother can just buy on steam so they dont have a disc check.

well ok that makes sense, did you read azure's write up on the last page? (i also quoted it on this page)

I'm interested by this, because when I watched videos of people fighting the first ogre, they could win on Normal by sitting there and smashing A A A A A A A then hitting whatever ability is avialable when the cooldown is over. After about 20 seconds of hack hack hack hack hack their health would go down and they'd shove in one healing potion, which would put them up to full. i could well be wrong, but isnt that first ogre basically part of the games tutorial? how many tutorial bosses are really tough to kill? also, i thought it was generally accepted nowadays that "normal" is easy, and "hard" is normal... who cares if AAAAAAAAAA works on normal if it doesnt work on Hard or Nightmare?

this is a good write up, I didn't know about those combos etc, and do hope they provide enough tactical/strategic elements to the combat that it doesnt devolve into mindless aaaaaaaaaa

i assume we'll see a mod to fix the friendly fire, and allow more zoom out on the camera within the next week or so... didnt mods like that come fairly quickly for DAO

There are four types of quests. Only one of those types feels like cheap filler. And they are literally "find an object on the ground, now go find the guy it belongs to." You're running the bloody lost and found. I assume this is also where the "80% of quests are fedex" claim comes from. Thankfully, those quests take really little time... they start when you find the item, and the recipient is then clearly marked on your map. In the open-exploration part Tales' at, these quests make up 50% of the quests numerically, but take only a few percent of the total time. The "real" quests are more well thought out, and seem to have several options on how to resolve them. Though how much of that has any kind of consequence, I can't say yet. None of the stuff has really stood out as great yet, but I haven't really been disappointed in them in general. I feel like this is one area where New Vegas really blew away the rest of the current rpg field. There are so many quests, and sidequests, and unmarked little quests, and interesting this to DO in the game that most other rpgs in recent years look really shallow by comparison. It felt like playing a classic rpg in a "modern" engine

i'd love the next generation to be powerful enough to support more physics engine properties, how cool would it be to have impacts actually be visible in game, or even just see a persons hand actually close around a glass instead of hover 2mm from its edges. It would add a lot to making games less "gamey"

NA release is actually august 23rd, the special edition of the game comes with a bunch of in game items (surprise) any drm news yet?

For some reason, I find myself going to the Eurogamer.net reviews. I think there's a certain Britishness in the writing (that I enjoy immensely), and they tend to have what I view as a pretty balanced viewpoint (at least into the kinds of games I'm interested in). I wish I could have the same faith as Monty. I don't think there's anyone here who I'd ask for a game recommendation (I haven't had the time to take CoH for a spin - that might change). funny that you mentioned eurogamer, they actually have become my number 1 review source over the past year as well, mostly due to the quality of writing. IGN (i know i know) actually has a very few decent writers as well, but more and more often I find myself extremely frustrated by their increasing number of bad writers. Still though, they often offer the longest product reviews from the major outlets (I really like those 3-5 page reviews they do for some releases, as they provide lots of information about the title). Usually a read through of the IGN for the information, and eurogamer for the quality of the review and the less fanboyish tastes, will give me a decent grasp of whether or not I will enjoy something. Better though would be if I could find an actual person with consistent taste who reviewed everything major that was released (ala Ebert in his heyday, I dont often agree with Ebert, but I glean enough from his reviews to know whether or not I will like the movie in question) edit: re oblivion, I actually think that game is sort of impossible to accurately review, because for the first 20-30 hours the game was really quite mindblowing, but after long play the minor problems became gigantic flaws. Most reviewers probably didnt make it past the honeymoon stage of the game

I like reviews. A well written review can tell me a lot about whether or not I will like a game. This doesnt mean I blindly take the review as fact, but can consider the things the reviewer liked or disliked and balance that against my own tastes.

for me at least, the loading times in DAO were completely insane, often as long as 4-5 minutes. After a patch they were much much improved, but in the first week or so the load times were stupid. If I have to deal with that again I shall be unhappy

i'm still looking forward to starting this when I get home. I am NOT looking forward to constant crashes. Particularly because the loading screens are apparently very long. At least FNV loaded up really fast after crashing. Maybe I'll be lucky though, I never had crashing problems with oblivion or fallout 3 (and only about a dozen crashes during FNV), had very very few crashes with DAO and zero crashes with ME2, so fingers crossed for a crashfreexperience

this is very helpful, but (and I'm probably wrong here) wasn't the 8800gt a high end card when it was released? or was it a midrange? I thought the midrange cards were the 8500 and the 8600? right now a high end is like the gtx580 and a midrange is a gtx 560?

i like that date, I'm soooo looking forward to this

ahhh level scaling, the bane of the rpg.

this may sound very quaint and old-fashioned, but an actual letter sent to a company will probably have 100+x the effect of a single lost sale. I'm not trying to say that an actual letter will necessarily get anything accomplished, but the chances of it having any effect or persuasiveness is still much much greater than 1 less than a million copies sold

i've certainly seen some commentators claim that the future is going to be (wirelessly) connecting your ipad to your tv and doing all your gaming on that with a wireless controller. I may be inclined to believe that's the future too, but it wont be made by apple, and its going to be 20 years from now, not 3. It's also not a new idea, gibson suggested more or less the same thing 25 years ago (and he probably wasn't the first), we're still waiting for it.

I'm feeling pretty confident about my guess. in 1.5-2 years, people will be feeling ready for the next generation and microsoft and nintendo will be there for them. Sony won't release the ps4 until late 2013 or summer 2014 though. kinect etc were released because I bet 5 years ago microsoft was expecting to release the xbox 3 in 2010-2011, and decided to push it out 2 years by releasing the kinect.

rambling time... My guess: next gen consoles will be announced in 2012, released in 2013, or perhaps released November/December 2012. my goal as a pc gamer is to always have a pc better than the consoles that are out, which virtually guarantees that I can play whatever games are released, on Max or near Max settings. So by that metric, if I wait to upgrade my pc for one year after the nextgen consoles are released, I should be able to get the "right" graphics card for pretty cheap, probably less than $200. so then I am left to wonder, what graphics card is likely to be the best card you can buy, in 3 years, for less than $200? the "right" card for the current generation was probably the 8800gtx or maybe the 9800gtx? (im just guessing here, cause i have a 9800gtx and it seems perfect for my pc gaming needs) so whats it going to be next time? I ask because I want to start shopping for it 3 years early. and yes, I am a

I guess a mass effect game that was completely unrelated to the initial trilogy might be ok, so long as we can stop hearing about protheans and reapers and collectors (such bad bad bad names for things....) my guess on DA2 sales: won't sell as well as DAO. It appears to have a lot more negativity about its release this time, action gamers aren't likely to purchase cause they didnt like the first one, and the rpg crowd is a bit miffed at this one for screwing up the PC interface. I think it will still make money, but will be enough of a non-smash that bioware will go again to the drawing board to try to figure out why they aren't hitting the numbers they want.

this is a bit off topic i guess, but I was just wondering, has anyone read anywhere that EA/Bioware is trying to line up DA and ME as franchises ala CoD, presumably to be released one everyother year (so bioware has a game every year, but each franchise alternates so as not to create annualreleaseburnouteffect), or are these two game series planned to be trilogies and then bioware is moving on to new IP? I liked ME2 a lot, but I don't want more than 3. and even if I end up LOVING DA2, I don't think I want to see more games set in it's world (unless the world is made dramatically more interesting by the new game). I guess what I'm trying to say is I'd like to see a new IP from bioware sometime before the end of next year (not a release, just an announcement at least that they are doing something new). or have they already made such an announcement and I missed it?

whoa this thread went crazy the past few days. I'm not really enthralled with any games right now, so at least DA2 will give me something to play, its probably not terrible, but probably not great either. Kinda like DAO was when it was released, it was fun, (i liked it more than kotor1 and NWN OC) but it wasn't a return to form for crpg's like it was hyped to be, mostly because the combat was insanely repetitive and the vast majority of encounters and creatures were badly designed and implemented. I gave a lot of that a pass on my first playthrough because I was enamored with a new toy, on later playthroughs the encounter design crushed my enjoyment. DA2 looks to be exactly the same, mediocre or bad combat, and boring encounters, but overall interesting enough to keep me entertained for at least one fun playthrough regardless. Of the recent Bio games, the only one I was able to play more than once all the way through was ME2.

halfway between diablo and morrowblivion eh? sounds interesting enough i guess, but its all in the execution.