Dragon Age 2

[Nightshape]

WOW DA 2 is almost a different game on console... Not... Not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

[Bos_hybrid]

I'm glad that the story lacks epicness for once. Bioware sorely needed to make a story like that, and just forget about epic battles that decided the destiny of the world.

 

Sort of hard to believe they've done that after playing the demo.

 

Either way these reviews have made getting an RPG without 'super epicness' doubtful.

 

Tried the demo agin this time as a rogue(after MC post about rogues), was actually surprised at how easy it was, after DA:O archers being pretty useless I didn't expect it to change, but in DA2 they are deadly. Actually after trying the 3 classes, I would say that playing as a mage was the hardest.

[Tigranes]

DA:O archers were insanely powerful if spec'd right, unless you mean enemy archers.

[Bos_hybrid]

DA:O archers were insanely powerful if spec'd right, unless you mean enemy archers.

 

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.

[Nightshape]

None of the games I mentioned have been released. I'm baising what I've said off the videos and screenshots I've ssen.

What are you basing your disagreement off of?

 

You know when you say "The Witcher", I'm going to think you mean "The Witcher", not "The Witcher 2".

 

I wouldn't compare screenshots, that's actually a false economy, screenshots are often doctored - like it or not.

 

There's clearly been a little confusion, I was merely saying I can't agree, I've seen none of them running.

 

The demo is an old build and DirectX 11 isn't working properly in it.

 

That said, I haven't seen anything that looked as good to me as this:

 

<snip>

It might be that I lack your appreciation for graphics, but I don't think DA II is as nice graphically.

 

Naturally the demo is an old build, builds occur daily. DirectX 11 worked fine for me, and I appriciated the look and feel of everything in a technical sense.

 

"I don't think DA II is as nice graphically" - You don't like the art direction? That what it sounds like to me.

 

 

I know that the developers themselves have been critical of the engine and that BioWare has gone through an engine about every two games, not including the expansions.

 

I can see why you'd buy the marketing speak, it just doesn't work like that though. There are always some core lib components that definately won't and don't get rewritten, unless its for a new platform.

 

A new engine, is usually an old engine with improvements, refactored, and maybe new arcitectural components. It's a complex thing to communicate, but what I'm basically getting at is when Bioware rename an engine, it doesn't mean its new, it means its an iteration.

 

Engine generally tends to be about general code arcitecture.

 

Okay. I assume you're not saying that these are all the same engine however, right?

 

No, but code reuse is very common, if someone wrote a very good low level library, something that was nicely optimized, then you may see some code that is very old, and was also used in Baldurs Gate, its just the way it is.

 

Without seeing code base's its hard to know for certain, I'm just making guess's based on observations made professionally.

 

The amount of misinformation that comes from companies, and fans is amazing. My favourite one of late is about the NGP from Sony, there was talk of that running actual PS3 games, and people took it seriously... If you read something, it doesn't mean its a fact, especially when the product hasn't been released.

 

Dragon Age II, has some nice technology, they've made a huge art direction U-turn, and based on what I just played on my PS3... WoW the SKU's are different.

 

The PC version and the PS3 version are on opposite sides of the room, Bio seems to be genuinely trying to cater to different play styles, I'm not sure which I prefer, but I'll sure be purchasing both sku's as a result.

[WorstUsernameEver]

You know when you say "The Witcher", I'm going to think you mean "The Witcher", not "The Witcher 2".

 

I wouldn't compare screenshots, that's actually a false economy, screenshots are often doctored - like it or not.

 

There's clearly been a little confusion, I was merely saying I can't agree, I've seen none of them running.

 

True, but we also have footage of both. Of course, The Witcher 2 looks like it's a long way before it's optimized properly, and I don't have too much trust in CDProjekt doing THAT right, but you can't say they look remotely similar.

 

Naturally the demo is an old build, builds occur daily. DirectX 11 worked fine for me, and I appriciated the look and feel of everything in a technical sense.

 

And many found the DX11 rendered glitchy as hell, me included. Plus, to be honest, having played the demo with both the DX11 enabled and only DX9, I can't say I noticed many differences. There's improvements over DA:O, sure, but they don't really seem so impressive to me. Granted, I'm not a technical guru, and frankly, I don't care about being one. I care about the final visual results, and both DA:O and DA2 seem roughly at the same level to my eyes. And yeah, that's not taking into account some atrocious artistic decisions like the Saturday morning cartoon feel they gave the game.

 

Code talk.

 

Don't really care about this stuff, to be honest.

[Mera]

The PC version and the PS3 version are on opposite sides of the room, Bio seems to be genuinely trying to cater to different play styles, I'm not sure which I prefer, but I'll sure be purchasing both sku's as a result.

What is the difference between them? I have only tried the ps3 demo.

[MrBrown]

DA:O archers were insanely powerful if spec'd right, unless you mean enemy archers.

 

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

[Gromnir]

DA:O archers were insanely powerful if spec'd right, unless you mean enemy archers.

 

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

 

archery is poorly designed and balanced in da:o. at low and mid levels, a dedicated archer is a liability to your party offering little in the way o' offensive or defensive support. at high levels a da archer is boss-killer that doles out ridiculous 'mounts o' damage. what?

 

was hoping that bio would take the opportunity to fix the archery skills in da2. based on what we has seen from the demo, the biowarians fixed archery so that it is no longer overpowered only at high levels... archery is now wacky powered at ALL levels. congrats to bio.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Volourn]

"a dedicated archer is a liability to your party offering little in the way o' offensive or defensive support."

 

No.

[Majek]

The PC version and the PS3 version are on opposite sides of the room, Bio seems to be genuinely trying to cater to different play styles, I'm not sure which I prefer, but I'll sure be purchasing both sku's as a result.

What is the difference between them? I have only tried the ps3 demo.

Well higher resolution, the game doesn't pause automatically when select an AOE spell, autoattack so you only have to choose the enemy to attack, moire space for talent shortcuts in the UI, and that's all i can think of.

[Nepenthe]

Not sure what's up with Bio and lack of clear strong villains in their recent games. ME1 kind of had Saren, DAO and ME2 nothing, really (both archdemon and Harbinger were... not really in the driving seat of the story)... Awakening was the "best" in this regard, with both the Architect and the Mother. Think the major story weakness of both DAO and ME2 is precisely this lack of a clear opponent, and looks like it's going to be the same thing again in DA2. Meh.

 

Also tried the PS3 version out, it does feel different from the PC version, and seemed to work pretty well with a 2-wep rogue build. In comparison to the PS3 DAO version, it's roughly 1000 times better.

 

Yes, PS3 DAO sucked. Not only because I was bedridden for five weeks and my girlfriend left me when I was playing it.

 

Re: no need for pausing. Play on a higher difficulty. Normal in these games is obviously not designed for people who have played RPGs for 10-20 years. At least not if they want to be challenged.

This is missing the point completely. You know that the way difficulty sliders work, only coefficients affecting enemy health and DPS are changed, and maybe stuff like crit % and resists. Turning up the difficulty doesn't result in more complexity in encounters, smarter enemies, or more dangerous use of the abilities they have. They are basically the same, with artificially inflated stats. This causes two main problems: combat is just as boring, but now it requires more micromanagement as you are forced to repeat the same kiting/healing/potion AI-exploit cheese routines in every fight - in short, managing combat becomes a chore. The second problem, it doesn't help with immersion if the lowest sorry ass bandits can stand up to the Savior/Champion/Hero in question, and give him a run for his money, because they have end-boss level stats as a result of lazy difficulty scaling design.

 

I'm thinking there's something between "I can autoattack through the game" and "everything is inflated". I'm thinking that sweet spot CAN be reached by tweaking enemy strength, and I'm also remembering that they managed to make tactics scaling in ME2 (ok, not a lot, but to a degree).

 

Haven't tried a PC archer yet, but it looks like the Overkill abilities Varric has are actually specific to him (and are apparently that hardcore to compensate for the fact his weapon isn't changeable). Will have to see how that turns out.

[Nightshape]

The PC version and the PS3 version are on opposite sides of the room, Bio seems to be genuinely trying to cater to different play styles, I'm not sure which I prefer, but I'll sure be purchasing both sku's as a result.

What is the difference between them? I have only tried the ps3 demo.

 

PC is awkwardly implemented point and click (alot like say KOTOR), PS3 == button smashing.

[Nightshape]

Stoopid double post.

Edited February 27, 2011 by Nightshape

[Nightshape]

True, but we also have footage of both. Of course, The Witcher 2 looks like it's a long way before it's optimized properly, and I don't have too much trust in CDProjekt doing THAT right, but you can't say they look remotely similar.

 

Not really following the witcher 2, so I can't comment... I'm just saying that DA 2 had some nice tech that I saw.

 

And many found the DX11 rendered glitchy as hell, me included. Plus, to be honest, having played the demo with both the DX11 enabled and only DX9, I can't say I noticed many differences. There's improvements over DA:O, sure, but they don't really seem so impressive to me. Granted, I'm not a technical guru, and frankly, I don't care about being one. I care about the final visual results, and both DA:O and DA2 seem roughly at the same level to my eyes. And yeah, that's not taking into account some atrocious artistic decisions like the Saturday morning cartoon feel they gave the game.

 

That's all subjective opinion. I also wouldn't expect anyone to notice certain things, its just pointless, its not until you've spent hours looking at this stuff that you'll notice the subtle differences, and most of the DX11 stuff is under the hood.

 

I'm not defending anything, I am merely saying, I actually like the look of DA 2, I respect it from a tech perspective, and I enjoy the new art direction.

[Nightshape]

True, but we also have footage of both. Of course, The Witcher 2 looks like it's a long way before it's optimized properly, and I don't have too much trust in CDProjekt doing THAT right, but you can't say they look remotely similar.

 

Not really following the witcher 2, so I can't comment... I'm just saying that DA 2 had some nice tech that I saw.

 

And many found the DX11 rendered glitchy as hell, me included. Plus, to be honest, having played the demo with both the DX11 enabled and only DX9, I can't say I noticed many differences. There's improvements over DA:O, sure, but they don't really seem so impressive to me. Granted, I'm not a technical guru, and frankly, I don't care about being one. I care about the final visual results, and both DA:O and DA2 seem roughly at the same level to my eyes. And yeah, that's not taking into account some atrocious artistic decisions like the Saturday morning cartoon feel they gave the game.

 

That's all subjective opinion. I also wouldn't expect anyone to notice certain things, its just pointless, its not until you've spent hours looking at this stuff that you'll notice the subtle differences, and most of the DX11 stuff is under the hood.

 

I'm not defending anything, I am merely saying, I actually like the look of DA 2, I respect it from a tech perspective, and I enjoy the new art direction.

[213374U]

I'm thinking there's something between "I can autoattack through the game" and "everything is inflated". I'm thinking that sweet spot CAN be reached by tweaking enemy strength, and I'm also remembering that they managed to make tactics scaling in ME2 (ok, not a lot, but to a degree).

Yes, the "something" you are referring to is actually putting some effort into encounter and monster design, and maybe a bit more into AI, as opposed to just repeating the same structure of stupid, insipid mobs in huge numbers, throughout the whole game. There were a few instances of interesting encounters in DAO (Tower of Ishal Ogre for instance), but they were generally too few and too far between. I want fights that force me to think on my feet and make me come up with something other than the same routines that work 99% of the time. I want different enemy groups to have different abilities that require me to actually pay attention to what's going on and do something other than "mana clash the mage, mop up". None of this can be accomplished simply by changing the damage and health factors across the board, it's something that needs to be done, at least to an extent, manually. If you know a bit about BG2 mods, the difference between the current approach and what I'm talking about is like the difference between the cheese-ridden Tactics and the performance-killer Sword Coast Stratagems.

 

re ME2: in ME2, enemies simply use their powers more often in higher difficulties (which isn't that big of a deal really, as enemy powers are weaksauce anyway, except for Harby's), enemies are equally brain-dead in all difficulties. I really like ME2 gameplay, and I think the combat in that game is deeper than what most people admit, but this isn't terribly relevant as that game is essentially a shooter, and your squadmates are artificially gimped so they don't steal Shepard's thunder. It's also more evidence that Bio can't (or won't bother to) program AIs for ****...

[Nepenthe]

Well, they seemed to try to flank me a lot more on Hardcore and Insanity than on lower difficulties. Maybe I just killed them before they managed to try anything on lower diffs.

[Volourn]

"Think the major story weakness of both DAO and ME2 is precisely this lack of a clear opponent, and looks like it's going to be the same thing again in DA2. Meh."

 

Why does a game need one of these? It's silly to require a 'major vilalin' just ebcause. besdies, both DA1 and ME2 had that role filled to varying degrees anyways 9even if you think they were 'underdevelopeed or weak').

 

The archdemon in DA1 - even though it's not talkative - works perfectly in that role. Plus, you had The Betrayer. In ME2, you have Harbringer taunting your throughout as the 'main vilalin'.

 

So both these games have main villains. I wish more games didn't have a main villain.

[Nepenthe]

'Coz is gives the story focus - something that is lacking in both DAO and ME2.

[Volourn]

Nah. Both games had focus whetehr you liked said 'focus' or not.

[Maria Caliban]

You know when you say "The Witcher", I'm going to think you mean "The Witcher", not "The Witcher 2".

 

I wouldn't compare screenshots, that's actually a false economy, screenshots are often doctored - like it or not.

 

There's clearly been a little confusion, I was merely saying I can't agree, I've seen none of them running.

Yes, I can see why you'd be confused about me calling it the Witcher. Sorry. Though I hope you didn't think I was saying DA II looks worse than the original Deus Ex.

 

I tend to take game developers at their word/screenshot until I have reason to believe otherwise. The (original) Witcher screenshots I saw looked like the (original) Witcher game I played.

 

 

 

Naturally the demo is an old build, builds occur daily. DirectX 11 worked fine for me, and I appriciated the look and feel of everything in a technical sense.

 

"I don't think DA II is as nice graphically" - You don't like the art direction? That what it sounds like to me.

I like the art direction I've seen for Dragon Age II. When I say that a game is pretty, which is what I've said about DAII, I'm talking about the asthetics of it. When I say 'graphics,' I typically mean textures and rendering and eye candy.

 

I know that the developers themselves have been critical of the engine and that BioWare has gone through an engine about every two games, not including the expansions.

 

I can see why you'd buy the marketing speak, it just doesn't work like that though.

What marketing speak? I'd really doubt marketing would want them to talk about the limitations of the DA II engine. Sure, marketing might want them to talk about the problems they had with DA:O and how they fixed them for DA II, but that's not what I'm referring to.

 

Moreover, it's not marketing speak that BioWare tends to change its engine every two games or so.

 

Infinity -> BG I and BG II + expansions

Auroa/ Odyssey -> NWN and Knights of the Old Republic + expansions

JE engine -> Jade Empire

DA/Lyceum engine -> DA:O and DA II and expansions

Unreal -> ME 1-3

 

There are always some core lib components that definately won't and don't get rewritten, unless its for a new platform.

 

A new engine, is usually an old engine with improvements, refactored, and maybe new arcitectural components. It's a complex thing to communicate, but what I'm basically getting at is when Bioware rename an engine, it doesn't mean its new, it means its an iteration.

The problem here is that you're defining new as 'completely built from scratch' and then telling me I'm wrong because I'm not using your definition of new. You are not going to convince me that among game developers, the word 'new' is only used for programs that are not derived from other programs and that don't make use of pre-existing libraries.

 

"Think the major story weakness of both DAO and ME2 is precisely this lack of a clear opponent, and looks like it's going to be the same thing again in DA2. Meh."

 

Why does a game need one of these? It's silly to require a 'major vilalin' just ebcause...

 

I'd say that a story-driven game benefits from clear obstacles to overcome and a strong personification of those obstacles. This doesn't have to be in the form of a villain.

Edited February 27, 2011 by Maria Caliban

[HoonDing]

I finally gave the demo a try.

[Magnum Opus]

Me too. It's finally crossed the line that I was first concerned about when I picked up Baldur's Gate, combat-wise: how on earth am I going to control multiple characters in real time? Pausing the game in order to play it "tactically" results in me hitting the spacebar three or four times for each second of time I let the game run. BG was all right; even with six characters I still had that underlying six second round to space out the actions I was required to take, so my pausing was less about me trying to catch up to the game and more about me deciding to try something of my own volition.

 

DA2 has crossed into different territory for me, even from Origins. The animations are over too quickly for me to keep up on my keyboard even just controlling one character, never mind three or four. Between that, the neutered overhead camera (woe betide the Hawke that gets shoved up against a wall in an alleyway; good luck seeing anything under those circumstances), and the incessant bloodsplosions and flames washing over 90% of the screen, this game plays like a pure action game. The tactical options are still there, but I already know I'm not going to be using them: To do so would require too much fighting with game itself, bouncing on the spacebar all the time, trying to move the camera to the one angle that'll let me see something...

 

Just watching a few gameplay videos shows how fiddly and cumbersome the game really is. At this point, I find myself wishing Bioware would do one of two things: abandon the "tactical gameplay" altogether and just go with a straight action game -- they're heading in that direction anyway -- or make a turn-based game that affords me the time to actually use the options they're implementing (heh... not in my lifetime). Origins was slow enough that I could let things unfold and enjoy the nifty moves I'd told my people to do. DA2 isn't.

 

Has been a lot of criticism that DA2 is an action game. Technically speaking I know it's not true, but I'll be a monkey's uncle if I don't find myself agreeing with the sentiment anyway because it sure seems that the game wants to be played that way.

 

*shrugs* Still, I am glad they released the demo. Confirmed that my decision not to preorder -- or even adopt the game before any sort of gold edition was released -- was the right one.

 

Have to admit that I was impressed with how fluidly the game ran on my Radeon X1650 graphics card, though. They've clearly either done a lot of optimizing, or hacked out a lot of the things that were bogging Origins down. Maybe both.

[Gromnir]

"Think the major story weakness of both DAO and ME2 is precisely this lack of a clear opponent, and looks like it's going to be the same thing again in DA2. Meh."

 

Why does a game need one of these? It's silly to require a 'major vilalin' just ebcause...

 

I'd say that a story-driven game benefits from clear obstacles to overcome and a strong personification of those obstacles. This doesn't have to be in the form of a villain.

 

*sigh*

 

as da2 is a crpg, the protagonist need necessarily be ill-defined. 'cause the protagonist gotta be functionally playable for potentially millions o' different people, the writers cannot develop the main character with the kinda detail one would expect from a novel's protagonist... or even the protagonist from a short story, movie, comic book or whatever. additionally, a crpg story is built 'round some sorta gameplay, which is 'posed to be visceral and engaging, but chopping up darkspawn into little darkspawn chunks is not gonna be creating particularly compelling story elements, is it? yeah, gameplay does, and should add to story development, but is always gonna be tough to create the necessary emotion outta squad-based tactical combat encounters. so, since the traditional main character is gonna be relative vague, from whence does the writer build his story? should be obvious that you gotta create emotional investment and if our vague hero is overcoming an ill-defined conflict, you has little chance to make the necessary emotional link for a compelling story to develop.

 

 

am genuine surprised that the biowarians made same mistake in yet another game.

 

HA! Good Fun!