Dragon Age 2

[Nepenthe]

I'm not sure if the attack animations are just choppy or they were moving too fast so it seemed like they were.

Youtube vids run at a low fps, always makes framerate/animations look choppy.

 

Doesn't mean they aren't, though, just that you can't tell from the source.

[Guest Slinky]

PC Combat Walkthrough

That HUD looks pretty bad and rogue hawke's animations are bit too ADHD for my liking, but it doesn't look too bad otherwise.

 

New character reveal: Fenris

Just one question: Can I kill him the second I meet him?

 

I don't even want to know what the Lady Crimsons of Bioboards think of him...

[HoonDing]

Male or female?

[Gorth]

Male or female?

Elf

[WorstUsernameEver]

Elven ladyboy.

[Tigranes]

I wonder if any Dragon Age universe characters have died from foreign blood getting in their eye.

 

On the walkthrough, actually, that looks OK - it looks like DAO but more frenetic, which isn't a bad thing. The RTwP games in 3D have always looked like stilted slow motion dancing (NWN1 the best example, as the earliest) and this tries to make the combat look & feel fun - and if the game is as responsive as it looks in that video (heh) then it would do what the devs are clearly wanting to do. GUI is pretty ugly but I could probably live with it... this video in itself seems to suggest you can still play DA2 the way you did DAO, which is pretty promising after all the talk about Magic Buttons.

[Labadal]

The combat looked better than I had hoped.

 

My biggest problem is the companions. They look like ****. I don't like their design at all.

 

I am just happy they released this video, because I am now cautiosly optimistic instead of being pessimistic.

[Nepenthe]

The HUD looks functionalist (in the architecture context), but is way better than the DAO HUD, which meant that on lower resolutions (PC and Console, running 720p to a 40" 1080p tv) meant that it was REALLY hard to see the health and stamina/mana bars for the currently active character. Looks like the new HUD has sorted that, but really doubt this is the final one. Wouldn't be the first time, either, I think the final HUD for ME2 was basically the last thing demoed.

[Mera]

New character reveal: Fenris

 

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

[WorstUsernameEver]

HOT HOT HOT I hope there will be at least some hot male-male action.

 

Can't agree more! I mean, the dwarf PC-Zevran sex scene was definitely the highlight of Dragon Age: Origins!

[Majek]

Wow, they really don't get tactical combat ( anymore). Hopefully the enemy will actually be competent at the highest difficulty.

[Morgoth]

For the love of god....

 

Combat video looks lame. The interface also looks streamlined.

Edited December 17, 2010 by Morgoth

[Monte Carlo]

The emo and fey NPCs are meh, the action-RPG combat option looks like Gauntlet-meets-Dungeon Siege but...

 

...the RTwP option looks quite crisp and well done.

 

I think the conflict between the new styles, as games dumb down, is the new TB versus RTwP! RTwP is the new turn-based! Who'd a thunk it? Attention Deficit all round!

[Bos_hybrid]

PC Combat Walkthrough

 

The combat looked better then I thought it would, not the horror halfbreed I thought it was going to be.

[Pop]

Over at SA people are having a lot of fun with the awesome rationale Bioware has given for not making Friendly Fire a toggle:

 

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.

Edited December 17, 2010 by Pop

[mkreku]

So they're removing a feature because someone, somewhere might be stupid enough to accidentally flip the switch and not know how to flip it back, thus ruining his easy setting..?

 

That must be a joke.

[Pop]

Well I don't know, just think of how awful it would be if I opened up an Obs game and changed a bunch of random settings only to find that when I moved my mouse, up was down and down was up! I'd say that's a failure of design. I'd want my money back.

Edited December 17, 2010 by Pop

[Hassat Hunter]

*facepalm*

 

Checkboxes, too difficult for the modern gamer... *sigh*

[entrerix]

this isnt even about the modern gamer anymore, this is straight up lowest common denominator design. I'm sure the average 10 year old can figure out how to check a box in the options of a game, this is about somebody who is so high on meth that they can barely work the controller they stole from gamestop.

 

in other words, this is a decision with gamers from florida in mind.

 

sorry florida, you and I both know this is true.

[Orogun01]

this isnt even about the modern gamer anymore, this is straight up lowest common denominator design. I'm sure the average 10 year old can figure out how to check a box in the options of a game, this is about somebody who is so high on meth that they can barely work the controller they stole from gamestop.

 

in other words, this is a decision with gamers from florida in mind.

 

sorry florida, you and I both know this is true.

I take offense at that. We only do the freshest cocaine down here.

[Niten_Ryu]

straight up lowest common denominator design.

 

I don't think it's that. Because they probably won't even touch the options and star game right away. Gaider is just full of crap and tries to find justification for extremely stupid design choice. So now it's send tank, taunt and/or stun/root and AoE away... for every multi mob encounter. Sure sounds like fun

 

Friendly fire is essential part of any tactical game. I guess it's safe to say that Dragon Age 2 won't require tactics

[alanschu]

Gaider's comments are specifically stated as suppositions on his part (though he is acting as an official voice for the company so I don't begrudge people having their concerns), though I don't know if I would agree with his take.

 

I will say that it's not something that can be easily added at this point in the project. The hooks for that particular functionality aren't currently implemented in the GUI at this time, and while it wouldn't necessarily be a difficult task, it will take time and at this point, decisions have to be made on where we spend our time. The likelihood of adding this feature is low because adding this means spending less time on something else. At this point, a large amount of our time is spent working on polish and bug fixing, and there are still some aspects of the GUI that still need to be implemented. Priority for GUI programming is going to go to that stuff. For those that want friendly fire at different difficulty levels, that sucks but it's the way it is

 

Note that the game decision to not have friendly fire means that we are working on balance based around this.

 

 

My early impressions of the game (having just started playing the actual content side this past week - the first time playing the game 'legit' in several months for myself), I am having a fun time. Prefacing this that I was able to enjoy the combat of the Baldur's Gate games, as well as games like KOTOR, I enjoy the combat in DA2. I typically find myself pausing the action a fair bit, though playing primarily my own character for "random" encounters with the occasional switch to party members when I would like finer control over the action. Note that I have only scratched the surface of Act 1 though, and the closest thing I have come to a boss fight is the end of the prologue, so I wouldn't say I have come across any situations yet where I expected that a fight SHOULD be very challenging. Difficulty is still in flux though as one day to the next balance changes make combats easier/harder than the previous day, so it is hard to say.

 

One of the aspects I enjoy a lot about combat in the early going are the class combos. That is, one class can put effects/debuffs on targets that other classes have abilities that take advantage of. Similar to DAO where Cone of Cold would freeze someone, and a 2H Warrior using Mighty Blow would get the guaranteed critical causing the target to shatter. I'm also eager to get deeper into the ability skill trees as I think there are some really cool sounding abilities (my legit playthrough is as a rogue), and I like what they have done with the followers and their abilities (some unique abilities, and some of it just cosmetic but "neat." If you look in the video, Rogue Hawke delivers his Miasmic Flask differently than Varric does).

 

 

On a personal level, as someone that is a part of QA (regular full time staff now too) I would not be comfortable with simply enabling a toggle button at this stage and just letting people have at it. I can understand how people who really want FF on lower difficulty levels will feel disappointed and would rather have this than nothing, but not all encounters are created equally and I wouldn't want to sign off on a feature without proper manhours spent on ensuring its validity and enjoyment. I think it would, at this point, look bad to have inconsistent difficulty issues where much of the game is at an appropriate difficulty level, but suddenly having the occasional encounter (especially a crit path encounter) that is uncharacteristically difficult because of the FF situation. This isn't a situation where I think it's as easy as telling that player to simply turn off FF for that fight if they've been playing at the same difficulty and FF setting for the first 15 hours of the game and enjoying the level of difficulty presented by the encounters thus far. Thus, I would be exceptionally hesitant about sending something out that didn't have adequate QA hours run over it. At this stage we just wouldn't have the time, and I wouldn't begrudge anyone that complains because of inconsistent difficulty. I think it would seem tacked on and not properly fleshed out, because realistically it would be. I wish that we could spend more time playtesting the game in difficulty levels such as Nightmare as is, but time allocations are made based upon where I believe many people will attempt to play the game. This makes a FF toggle at this time a catch-22, because if enough people really wanted it then I feel we'd need to spend more QA time on it (which we don't have a lot of at this point), but at the same time if only a small portion of the gaming audience would really enable it at lower difficulty levels, then the very valuable programming time to set up the hooks for enabling this at this time would probably be better used elsewhere.

 

 

I am only playing on normal difficulty though (on a personal level I don't necessarily care for combat being "difficult" or "challenging" for the sake of it. I like combat to be fun so I rarely feel a need to crank up difficulty levels in games). As a result I don't have any experience with how friendly fire is or how difficult the game is on Nightmare. If people are interested I can spend a day or two playing around on Nightmare and post my feedback for it.

 

Another note about commentary regarding the playthroughs. While Hawke may have been close to death during the "actiony" elements, I'd still say that the player was going to win that encounter, even if Hawke had been incapacitated.

 

Friendly fire is essential part of any tactical game. I guess it's safe to say that Dragon Age 2 won't require tactics

 

I can understand your frustration, but I disagree with this statement. I have played my share of instances and raids in a game like WoW where teams have to strictly adhere to tactics to successfully complete the encounter, and that game does not have Friendly Fire. I think it is possible to have a game that requires thought throughout combat that doesn't need to rely on Friendly Fire being enabled in order to achieve said thought. By the same token, I found the combat in Baldur's Gate 2 to be pretty formulaic in my experience as well. Just my 2 cents.

 

 

Anyways, sorry for the wall of text.

Edited December 18, 2010 by alanschu

[Pop]

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

[Tigranes]

Wait, so DA2 doesn't have friendly fire on any difficulty, or just on higher ones? If higher it doesn't affect me (as I'd then have it), otherwise... meh, it's not great. Friendly fire is an important part of a lot of tactical fun in squad combat, "essential" or not. I can see the reasoning behind tying it to difficulty thoguh.

 

Also, both Fenris are clearly imitations of the real Fenstermaker.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Unless they changed something, I think the lead designer said it was in Nightmare only.