Dragon Age 2

[Tigranes]

Oh boy.

 

I didn't think there was a way to make me feel bad about downloading the demo. Maybe I can torrent it or osmething.

[Gromnir]

Dragon Age players, this is your call to arms! We need one million players of the Dragon Age 2 demo and we want you to rally the troops to reach this monumental goal. Tell your friends, tell your family, talk about it on Facebook, Twitter, talk about it at school and at work. We want One Million downloads of the Dragon Age 2 demo and we need you to rally the troops to reach this goal.

 

If we reach One Million downloads, we will reward players with 2 new in-game items the Lothering

[Enoch]

As I understand it, the Demo only gets counted if you 'log in' to your EA/BW online account with it on. There's probably a way to play the demo without it adding up to their total

 

But, yeah, this is weird from two angles. First, "if lots of people play the demo, we'll make the game easier" (which is all that giving free GP & XP does) doesn't make much sense to me. Second, if these books actually have any narrative content (e.g., an interesting item description), are they really going to hold them back if they fall short of their goal?

[Magnum Opus]

A little bit of investigation reveals a simple method by which the dastardly whitecoats can be foiled: Don't log in to your EA account when you're playing.

 

From the Bio website:

"To get your download counted, you will need to log into your EA account while playing the demo."

 

Am going to assume that the demo is going to be like the character creator or Origins itself was, and that you don't actually need to be logged in to play it.

 

Edit: Ninja'd.

Edited February 18, 2011 by Magnum Opus

[Orogun01]

Need? No.

Want to get as many people virally advertising their game as possible? Who doesn't?

 

The rewards are stupid (an item that gives you a little money and an item that gives you a little XP), so I won't be upset if they don't make the quota.

We are gamers, we do stupid things for virtual rewards.

[Oblarg]

The gameplay I saw so far looked super ****ty and boring. Am I the only one who is feeling like that? Don't want to read the thread.

 

Looks worse than DA:O, which is quite a feat.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

yep, it does look boring and overall awful, but we haven't seen the many quests DA2 has to offer. maybe Bio's genius is hidden there. if the combat is what I think it is, I'm gonna pass on DA2 altogether. good thing only a couple of days left 'til the demo.

How much do you want to bet the it will get golden reviews praising every single aspect of the game no matter how bad it (maybe) is?

 

I'll be happily skipping this one. Looks like it has way too much Bio fanservice.

[Azure79]

Man, what's with all the negativity?

 

I think the combat looks much improved over DAO, with faster/better animations. I perused the skill trees and the potential for cross class combos is great. It looks like you can make the combat as tactical as you want it to be, with states like staggered, dazed and brittle leaving enemies open to devastating damage from other party members' skills. The new skills are better laid out as well.

 

I don't think I'll be button mashing my way through this game at all.

 

And from the opening cutscene, it looks like the main story will be something like Hawke destroying or significantly weakening the Chantry. I think that will make for some good storytelling.

[HoonDing]

I can't even remember any sidequests of DA:O that weren't fetch and/or kill.

Edited February 19, 2011 by virumor

[Orogun01]

I can't even remember any sidequests of DA:O that weren't fetch and/or kill.

Actually a lot of the quest were fetch first, do random encounter second.

[sorophx]

Looks like it has way too much Bio fanservice.

qft

I think the combat looks much improved over DAO, with faster/better animations.

well, to me an improved combat would be something similar to Severance, with combos you can perform with any of your characters at any given time. it has to be fluid, too.

 

I don't really care about animations, since this isn't important in such a game. the question that bothers me the most is: will the speed at which I click on the enemies affect the speed at which Hawke swings his weapon(s)? because watching the demo it doesn't seem that way. which brings us to this point: why all the talk about the "faster" combat animation if it doesn't do any good in combat other than make Hawke look like a blender

[Azure79]

For the animations, I think a lot of it had to do with how slow animations were in DAO, not how it affected gameplay. It looked ridiculous when warriors slowly pulled back then slowly struck out at enemies with their weapons. Dual wield warriors with haste on was the only attack animation that looked like a seasoned warrior was fighting. I am all for the animations being faster and the gameplay being tweaked to compensate for it. I did think it was too fast at first, but I watching the latest videos, they look good to me.

 

I'm all for a good RPG with combat mechanics like Severance. However, how will that work in a party based game?

[sorophx]

I'm all for a good RPG with combat mechanics like Severance. However, how will that work in a party based game?

very simple, your party distracts the enemies while you take care of them. if they're too tough, you use your party members' abilities to debuff/weaken them. and you switch around to use these abilities. having some way of making combos out of abilities would help too. some games already do it but it's usually very simplistic. Bio has had a chance of doing it right. but that would be too much to ask, probably

[HoonDing]

As long as party members can fight well on their own and don't require constant micro-management, such a system could work.

 

Demon Stone had a party of three and combos, it worked alright in that game. Another example is Summoner, which didn't have combos but chain attacks instead. IIRC even Ninja Gaiden Sigma had a couple of levels where you fought alongside another character.

Edited February 19, 2011 by virumor

[sorophx]

Final Fantasy XII had some kind of chains or combos I think. but even without combos. hell, even Mass Effect does it. the only problem I see is that in DA2 the party is twice as big, but that can be countered with bigger , tougher monsters and larger numbers of enemies. just make the encounters rare but make sure they last longer and have space for party tactics

[Tigranes]

Well if you go down that route you really have to abandon "Next BG" combat altogether. I'm really looking to TW2 / DS3 to provide that style, though, it'd be nice to have one franchise out there really sticking with tactical squad combat. And it seems like after all that, DA2 might well be.

[sorophx]

I didn't find encounters in DAO more tactical than in BG2. and by the looks of it DA2 won't be much of a tactical game either

[Tigranes]

It was less tactical, but it was in a similar mold. I think DA2 combat can potentially be similar to DA1 with the exception of castrated camera, hard to tell from looking at videos of people.

 

Really hoping the recent demo vid was on Easy/Easiest though, because each darkspawn hit seemed to do less than 1% of full HP and that one girl could beat 5 of them and the Ogre by herself popping a couple of health pots. Why even bother playing?

[sorophx]

Really hoping the recent demo vid was on Easy/Easiest though, because each darkspawn hit seemed to do less than 1% of full HP

it you mean the first part of that string of videos, then I think it was meant to be exaggeratedly easy just to show how powerful Hawke is thought to be by the common folk.

Edited February 19, 2011 by sorophx

[Orogun01]

For the animations, I think a lot of it had to do with how slow animations were in DAO, not how it affected gameplay. It looked ridiculous when warriors slowly pulled back then slowly struck out at enemies with their weapons. Dual wield warriors with haste on was the only attack animation that looked like a seasoned warrior was fighting. I am all for the animations being faster and the gameplay being tweaked to compensate for it. I did think it was too fast at first, but I watching the latest videos, they look good to me.

 

I'm all for a good RPG with combat mechanics like Severance. However, how will that work in a party based game?

After that watching that fight with the Ogre and the same repeating animation, over and over with that awful sound I'm definitively in the "hate the animations" group. Looks like they tried to make it more actiony but it is still and action game with just one set of combat animations.

[Volourn]

DA was definitely more 'tatical' than BG. No contes.

 

"How much do you want to bet the it will get golden reviews praising every single aspect of the game no matter how bad it (maybe) is?

 

I'll be happily skipping this one. Looks like it has way too much Bio fanservice."

 

How much do you want to bet the same 'ol tired anti BIO contingent will bash it repeatedly for eyars to come in every aspect no matter how good (maybe) it?

 

 

Works both ways.

[Tigranes]

it you mean the first part of that string of videos, then I think it was meant to be exaggeratedly easy just to show how powerful Hawke is thought to be by the common folk.

 

True, I forgot about that. And I suppose it also serves as a nice tutorial, though there were way too many darkspawn for my taste (since you won't keep the party / items / XP etc from that part, would you? So no motivation)

[Azdeus]

For the animations, I think a lot of it had to do with how slow animations were in DAO, not how it affected gameplay. It looked ridiculous when warriors slowly pulled back then slowly struck out at enemies with their weapons. Dual wield warriors with haste on was the only attack animation that looked like a seasoned warrior was fighting. I am all for the animations being faster and the gameplay being tweaked to compensate for it. I did think it was too fast at first, but I watching the latest videos, they look good to me.

 

I'm all for a good RPG with combat mechanics like Severance. However, how will that work in a party based game?

 

 

I think the new animations look immensely stupid, that twohanded sword looks like it weighs about as much as a toothpick, so does the sword and board. Not to mention the stupid "art" or "design" if you wish. Atleast in Origins your equipment seemed to have some sort of mass, and it was'nt stop and go animations all the time. Better flowing if you wish.

And here I was thinking I'd never praise Origins, guess Einstein was right about his relativity theory.

[Maria Caliban]

Two magazine reviews.

 

PC Games gave it 88, pros and cons:

+ very well told hero story

+ varied followers, each with their own stories

+ great dialogs with moral decisions

+ exciting boss battles

+ martial-arts-fans should have great fun with possibly the fastest (or fast paced) battles in a fantasy game

 

- ...but old-school RPG players might have their problems with the flurry of activities in battles

- limited class progression with fixed skilltrees

- poor level design with one-to-one copy-pasting of whole quest areas (I assume they mean the areas in Kirkwall have day and night versions)

- unsatisfying ending

 

Gamestar gave it 87, pros and cons:

+ thrilling storyline

+ great dialogs and quests

+ coherent / consistent game world

 

- some fiddly battles

- less epic as DAO

 

Their conclusion: great RPG, a little weaker than DAO

 

Source. German.

Edited February 19, 2011 by Maria Caliban

[Monte Carlo]

limited class progression with fixed skilltrees

 

I hate it when the gaming press fail to dig where Bio are coming from on this, the skill trees are distinct, help the player make optimal decisions and are indicative of the sort of game Bio wants to make. And, of course, the epic dARk HeRoIC FanTaSY that only Bio can deliver.

 

Naysayers should be sent, quite rightly, to the gaming naughty step for being out of touch elitists.