MrBrown

That's a class-based restriction. Warriors: Two-handers, sword&shield. Rogues: Dual daggers, archery. Mages: fancy sticks. Interestingly enough, Hawke's armor is not class-restricted. But it has differing stat requirements by class, so it might as well be. Weird. EDIT: There are story-related instances where a companion will change their armor's appearance, but I'm not sure if this changes the stats. PS. Companions (warrior and rogue ones) are restricted to one weapon type. So while you can change Aveline's sword and shield, she'll never equip two-handers. They obviously also lack the tree that gives abilities for the other weapon type. Mage companions, on the other hand, lack one spell tree. All companions have one specialization tree, that's unique for them (but all somewhat similar to other specializations in DA:O or DA2), and which cannot be picked by Hawke. Hawke has 3 specialization trees, of which s/he can access one at level 7 and a second at level 14. In short: Hawke, 6 base trees, 3 specialization trees per class. Companions: 6 trees, 5 from base class trees, one unique. Oh, and you don't have to find specializations in the world, just get to the required level. (well, that was a long addendum.)

Only Hawke can change armor. The others stick with what they have, though they can be upgraded. Varric is an exception, he also won't change his weapon. The others will. Accessories, which include amulets, belts, and two ring slots, can be changed for everyone. As to why they did it, maybe they wanted companions to keep their unique looks? Yes. They basically work like two different areas, rather than a cycle or anything.

You have used the right mouse button to change the view, right? I got used to it once I figured that out

It seems to me it'd work better, if there were more of it. If gameplay was more linear, and after 10 hours of sidequesting you wouldn't suddenly remember "oh, there was that thing". It's foreboding I guess, because there's several possibilities on how the game will end.

The story is really slow to develop. For the first 10 hours, you're basically just doing stuff that either introduces stuff in the world, hints at later plot developments or sets up allegiances. _All_ the stories develop in acts, so you won't, as an example, just pick up Valygar, get this companion quest, go do his quest, get his whole story, and be done with it. Later on, there are a lot more development, twists, and so on. Some of them are kinda generic, some are really cheesy, but I've run into a few that were really, really good. (No, dunno about the ending yet.)

Sounds like the major difference between Normal and Nightmare is positioning and constant movement. My two-hander using Warrior seems to be performing about equally in normal, as Azure's does in Nightmare. Either I've levelled him badly, or there's not much difference in enemy stats.

When you meet the first ogre, your guys are level 2 (or maybe 3?), and have exactly that amount of abilities, part of which might be passive, or not useful against the ogre. So, yes, the battle will be pretty boring. Battles on higher levels rely much more on active abilities. On lower difficulty levels, you can probably get by mostly on using the Tactics-options, though. EDIT: In regards to what Azure wrote, I think there are some slight differences in DA2 that changes the roles each class can have. Namely, Warriors using Two-Handers mostly deal AoE damage, and thus are most useful in clearing out mobs rather than bosses. Mage base attacks seem to be a lot more powerful, so you don't necessarily want to constantly keep hitting that arcane bolt/lightning bolt -button like in DA:O

Maybe they're cut-scene only. Good riddance, I say.

No worries on that part. AFAIK, the side-quests can only be solved before you proceed past a certain point in the main path.

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.

It's just like BG2, and everyone loved BG2, so that's must be good, right? Right? The range on the scale is short though, so it's easy to get to one end, even if they occasionally disagree with you. It isn't like Awakening, where you had to watch closely to everything you said...

I wouldn't want to play with Friendly Fire in this game. Every other ability seems to do AoE damage.

There are quite a bit of boss fights that take several minutes, because they just have so much HP. If I used the new weakening abilities more efficiently, they might be faster, but so far I've used my ability points on passive abilities, threat management, and healing. :/ EDIT: I've already encountered over a dozen chances for Faustian deals. I wonder if there's some sort of grand consequence for this stuff.

I don't think this is the case. Weak enemies still seem to be weak, but the tougher ones I still have to whack at for several minutes.

Spoiler: feel free to spend money on items. At least, if you plan on doing all the side quests. I think the structure of the game is very reminiscent of BG2.

I've had no loading time or crashing problems in the 10 hours I'm in. Only problem I've had is it sometimes turn from fullscreen to windowed mode when returning from alt+tab.

DA:O still has unfixed infinite exp and infinite money glitches. So, nothing new there...

This game has way too many sidequests.

It's not that bad. Having an approachable difficulty curve isn't some big offense. What's the real complaint? If what they're saying means that they're getting rid of character creation, and putting more options inside the game, I'm all for it. I hate when games make me restart them N times just to find out what all the options in character creation actually do.

I'm posting this fanart, because I know it'll make you all happy.

Really? Guess I never spec'd Leliana right. I always found Zev as a duelist more useful then Leliana as an archer. Will have to roll an Archer next time I play DA:O. Archers in DA:O are rather badly designed. Most of their talent are completely useless, but Scattershot is rather overpowered. In Awakening, the same trend continues, expect the talent Accuracy now gets archers God Mode. Attack and DPS 1.5 to 2 times that of a melee DPS Warrior, with >75% crit chance? Right-o. There's a good article on how to build effective archers using their passive abilities on the DA wiki: http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Archery:_A...icient_Approach

You can. Not in the demo, though.

Isn't the whole dialogue symbol thing supposed to track player characterization or whatever? I remember reading that the response style you choose will have effect in the long run, so that if you choose (for example) peaceful lines, you'll have peaceful solutions to some later quests.

I wonder what they mean by that. I was going through various scenarios in my head, and the worst I could come up with, was that after the fight with the big boss, the screen cuts to Varric and Cassandra, they turn towards the camera, and say: "And for the continuation of the story, buy the DLC out in late 2011!".

I doubt the other one is going to live long either. In any case, seeing as people are already complaining about this on the BIO boards, I'm sure there'll be a mod.