Dragon Age 2

[Tale]

I really haven't commented on this anywhere. It's like I've been ignoring it. Which is odd, since I'm practically a DA:O fanboy.

 

DA:O is the only reason I started caring about Bioware again. After hating Neverwinter Nights, being completely unispired by Jade Empire, and resoundly meh'ing at Mass Effect, the only reason I gave it a shot was because of my Claudia Black fanboyism. (Is fanboyism even a word? If not, must petition Websters.)

 

And I loved it. Played it 2 and 1/2 times in a row without touching anything else. Unheard of by me. And it was my enjoyment of that which made me give them a chance on ME2. Which I enjoyed enough to also played 2 times through without touching anything else. But I still loved DA:O more.

 

But I don't know what to make of it. If the overall direction leans to be like ME2, then I could still like it. If the story is more solid than DA:O, I could like it more. But the differences don't have me excited. I think the main reason I enjoyed it was the old-school RTS hybrid combat where I would pause, issue orders, unpause, and repeat, giving me that tactical feeling that no game that's not obviously a strategy game gives anymore. If 2 lacks that, I could still like it, but I'm not going to be excited for it.

 

 

I can't explain it, but the change in direction for the sequel seems to be killing my interest in DLC of the original. Must ponder on this.

Edited July 26, 2010 by Tale

[Volourn]

"It's same with darkspawn - They are very similar to orcs. I'd say they are extremely similar to LotR orcs"

 

No. But, hey, dragons are now considered orcs. So are ogres, so are those sneaky guys that pump up from the ground. People have weird defintion of orcs. L0L

 

 

"I think the main reason I enjoyed it was the old-school RTS hybrid combat where I would pause, issue orders, unpause, and repeat,"

 

PC version should be staying basically the same, and even the console version you'll be able pause and select commands. The basics of combat isn't really gonna change. Ignore the silly hype diahherra.

Edited July 26, 2010 by Volourn

[Amentep]

Yeah they've said repeatedly the PC combat isn't changing - its hard to believe how much argument is coming about the "dumbing" down of PC games over this though...

[Tale]

That's good to hear.

[WorstUsernameEver]

To be honest, from what I've heard from people that actually have played the console version of Origins, the console combat isn't changing that much either.

Really, it looks like the only dramatic change they've done is to make control response smoother and the animation quicker.

Hopefully they've also fixed the enormous balance problems and the encounter design problems that Origins had...

 

GreyWardens.com impressions of the Comic-Con demo.

Edited July 26, 2010 by WorstUsernameEver

[Oner]

Considering that the IGN-reviewer thinks that one is too nerdy to know the difference between ogres, orcs and goblins, i wouldn't be surprised either. All in the name of "broadening" the audience.

 

I chuckled when I saw that. Dude writes on a gaming site about video games, and he's trying to make himself out to be "cool" because he doesn't know the difference between ogres, orcs, or goblins? Who's he fooling?

-Internet, roll a bad joke comprehension check.

-*rolls* ...1.

-You misunderstand the joke's intention completely.

 

It's self-deprecating humor. If the subject were too nerdy for him, you think he would know there is a difference between orcs, goblins and darkspawn? ('Sides, there really isn't much, at least between orcs and darkspawn.)

[Raithe]

Hm.. I haven't gotten around to playing the expansion for DA yet.. I think the grind to finish DA:O might have sapped me somewhat... But I do find the idea of a ten year span for the sequel to be interesting.. Putting a bigger shift on potential character development and just how you might be able to affect the world around you over that time frame...

 

Might make me start poking the DA bandwagon again...

[Thorton_AP]

How do you figure that DA has a much longer crit path, by the way? Just curious - I mean, BG2 revolved around the fact that you had the choice of a bewildering number of sidequests to kick off the crit path, while DA pretty much forced you to consume the majority of the game content in the form of crit path hubs. I mean, is a direct comparison really worthwhile?

 

The crit path in BG2 is shorter because, as you state yourself, a lot of the content is optional. I have no doubt that I can beat Baldur's Gate 2 in significantly less time than I could beat Dragon Age.

 

DA takes longer to play, and less of the content is optional. I think this is, in general, a bad thing. I'd support a move similar to Baldur's Gate 2, where there's a lot of content, but more of it is optional (cost of game development seems to be hindering this though).

[Thorton_AP]

GreyWardens.com impressions of the Comic-Con demo.

 

 

I read this and found this:

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).

 

I am a bit worried about them taking liberties with "my story" as I play the game, but then I started thinking. I bet what is happening is the demo is probably the very start of the game, and they start you out with very powerful abilities and whatnot to give players an idea of what a high level character of this class plays like. Heck, if they use a type of "framed narrative" they could be showing off a sequence closer towards the end of the game.

 

Don't know how it'll play out, but I think it's too bold of a move to simply have the story play out the way the "Storytellers" are describing it without any consideration for the choices and actions that the player actually made. If this is the way they do things I bet it backfires immensely.

 

 

Giving the player a taste of what he'll become though, might be interesting. It might be too much to handle for a newer player, but at the same time it might help a player decide "this class isn't for me" early in the game.

 

Just taking crap and throwing it up against the wall

[Tale]

The entire idea of the narrator taking liberties with character power being a factor in how easy or difficult battles is comes across to me as way too narratively deep for a Bioware game.

 

Of course, if I saw it come from anyone else I'd simply say it was silly. Deep and silly.

Edited July 26, 2010 by Tale

[Thorton_AP]

LOL touche

[Monte Carlo]

Look, the 'unreliable narrator' is a long-established literary convention (Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is a classic example) which only goes to show the pretensions that drive this project.

 

As the man said earlier, the unreliable narrator will be a device whereby whatever you do, Bio still tells you what happened. The excuse being, "it's an unreliable narrator, a classic literary device, look how clever we are."

 

Lastly, the time frame will merely provide new, linear, activity hubs (Years 1-3, Years 3-7, Years 8-9 the YeAr 10 ThE YEaR of DaRk HERoiC FantASy!!).

 

How do I know this, sport fans? Because of the hyperbolic spin around every previous Bio title since BG2.

 

Cheers

MC

[Volourn]

Seems to work since you keep buying/playing their games. And, their games keep selling more and more with ME2 and DA being their most successful games to date. *shrug*

[Monte Carlo]

As usual you are talking out of your you-know-what.

 

My Bio purchase history, since BG2 has been NWN and Dragon Age. Jade Empire and the Mass Effects passed me by.

 

I won't be buying DA:2. I will however, be sniping at it.

 

Diablo 2 and Battle.net will I suspect be my next big gaming thing.

[GhostofAnakin]

The more I read about this narrator thing they're going with, the more I'm worried that there's really going to be no "choices" available to the player. No matter what you decide to do as a course of action, the narrator will override it with their own version (ie. BioWare's canon version) of what actually happened ... even if it doesn't mesh with what I did.

 

I really hope they clarify this, because as it stands it sounds like the story will unfold one way and any choices you have are irrelevant after that "mission" is over since they'll be overwritten by the narrator's point of view of events.

[Thorton_AP]

Look, the 'unreliable narrator' is a long-established literary convention (Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is a classic example) which only goes to show the pretensions that drive this project.

 

Meh, I'm sticking with my assessment in the meantime.

[HoonDing]

I'd like narrators that, instead of embelleshing the hero's actions, would do the exact opposite, along with taking constant potshots at the 'hero'. Something like this was in the Bard's Tale remake (I believe that was Tony Jay)... it was even taken further in that game by the protagonist at one part reacting to the narrator's snarkyness.

[Raithe]

I was half-reading it as the whole.... embellishing narrators as an excuse to make the action much more..cinematic. Sort of a whole "yes, we know you can't actually spin around 15 times with a sword in each hand and cut a swathe through a horde of darkspawn while hopping on one foot... but we're going to give you a quick button that lets you pull off that maneouver because it's not you, it's someone telling your story later...."

 

So rather then the grim, gritty, and closer to reality (that magic wielding fantasy worlds can potentially be) physical world, they can make things just a touch more.. cinematic silly with that narration device.

[Thorton_AP]

What I am hoping for from the framed narrative is more of a "You made a big choice and instead of waiting 40 hours to see a blurb about it in some epilogue slide show, we can actually fast forward a bit and have you actually play through the consequences of your actions instead of just read about it."

 

But then, I'm a hopeless optimist

[mr insomniac]

I've mostly enjoyed Bio's games games over the years, so I'm still interested, but given the info released so far, this isn't a pre-order or day one purchase for me. If the narration is done similar to AP, where narrator = Leland, that might not be so bad. I certainly enjoyed Leland's foreshadowing of key events, and that I was given some leeway in how those events played out.

[Thorton_AP]

Yeah I liked it in AP as well.

 

Which is probably why I have some optimism for it.

[GhostofAnakin]

I've mostly enjoyed Bio's games games over the years, so I'm still interested, but given the info released so far, this isn't a pre-order or day one purchase for me. If the narration is done similar to AP, where narrator = Leland, that might not be so bad. I certainly enjoyed Leland's foreshadowing of key events, and that I was given some leeway in how those events played out.

 

I hope the narrative will be similar to what AP did with Leland. If it is, then I'll be less concerned about that aspect of the game.

[Raithe]

I've mostly enjoyed Bio's games games over the years, so I'm still interested, but given the info released so far, this isn't a pre-order or day one purchase for me. If the narration is done similar to AP, where narrator = Leland, that might not be so bad. I certainly enjoyed Leland's foreshadowing of key events, and that I was given some leeway in how those events played out.

 

I hope the narrative will be similar to what AP did with Leland. If it is, then I'll be less concerned about that aspect of the game.

 

If they manage to put something in similar to Leland telling you events that he thought had happened..but you'd done something different and they managed to have Mike smirking slightly in the background... That was a nice touch. It's that sort of thing that raises the bar for other games to meet.. and it would be nice if Bioware could pull it off.

[Tale]

Be careful you two, that idea's almost enough to turn "unreliable narrator" into massive hype.

 

Because Leland was very nice and I'd get excited for any game that considered following that.

Edited July 26, 2010 by Tale

[sorophx]

this game looks more and more like "The Witcher" to me, even the both games' main characters look alike, and it could be a good thing. I just hope they ditch the romance and let Hawke be a womanizer, collecting medieval era panties or something...