Dragon Age 2 - Catch All

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Okay, I'm not going to go all NMA about the camera...

...yet.

If it is legitimately and improvement I'm open to it, and it sounds good.

That interview alleviated my fears a little. Sounds like it's just a minor change and we'll still get the tactical viewpoint.

I don't need the camera to be completely top-down. I usually played it at a slight angle.

Dammit! I want it to be simpler and dumb
I thought the combat in DA:O got tedious

kyrieee wrote:

Dammit! I want it to be simpler and dumb
I thought the combat in DA:O got tedious

Maybe you should play a different game rather than wishing an existing game and franchise change to suit your tastes? It's kind of like wanting CoD: Black Ops be a squad-based affair like GRAW.

Duoae wrote:
kyrieee wrote:

Dammit! I want it to be simpler and dumb
I thought the combat in DA:O got tedious

Maybe you should play a different game rather than wishing an existing game and franchise change to suit your tastes? It's kind of like wanting CoD: Black Ops be a squad-based affair like GRAW.

Seconded. I LOVED the combat in DA:O, and would be really sad if it was simplified in DA2.

kyrieee wrote:

Dammit! I want it to be simpler and dumb
I thought the combat in DA:O got tedious

I think the "casual" difficulty setting will accomplish what you're looking for.

You know, if done right, the difficulty selector could be the way that DA2 CAN satisfy everyone. Want a Zelda/real time combat hack-n-slash? Lower the difficulty. Want a super-tactical challenge? Raise the difficulty. I think the problem with that in DA:O was that there weren't more difficulty options ("casual" was just too easy) to completely find the sweet spot. Maybe a set of Madden-style difficulty sliders?

It doesn't even have to be super complicated; they could simply create presets for their various difficulty parameters representing 'casual', 'easy', etc... and provide a single difficulty slider that does linear interpolation between the presets.

Looking a bit better, now. Let's see what it really gets down to when it hits... I'm not kidding anyone, though, I'm getting it on day one.

Well the more info I hear about this, the happier I'm becoming. Still can't wait to see actual gameplay footage though.

People keep talking about DAO and DA2 but whatever happened to DA1?

Spoiler:

I couldn't help myself. I'm a bad person.

Whenever I hear something new about DA2 I yell at my screen. Then Bioware tries to explain what supposedly should have been in the interview/article/whatever, and I end up thinking it isn't all that bad anyway...
Shouldn't they fire their PR department already, or is this a smart way make people discuss your game?
They did the same for DAO after all.

Shadout wrote:

Whenever I hear something new about DA2 I yell at my screen. Then Bioware tries to explain what supposedly should have been in the interview/article/whatever, and I end up thinking it isn't all that bad anyway...
Shouldn't they fire their PR department already, or is this a smart way make people discuss your game?
They did the same for DAO after all.

There's less blood and emo rock this time. I guess they feel they've already caught the console crowd

New pics (source), all two of them. Including FemHawke
IMAGE(http://imgur.com/yc9iR.jpg)
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/Pdn3k.jpg)

Scratched wrote:

Including FemHawke

I can accept that I'm going to be the only one who uses the "Dude Shepard" and "Lady Shepard" nomenclature, but they're practically begging people to evoke the 80s classic in DA2.

Ladyhawke (sans Rutger Hauer, alas!) looks pretty awesome, the new Qunari wild. I never thought I'd consider Sten "the cuddly one".

SpacePPoliceman wrote:
Scratched wrote:

Including FemHawke

I can accept that I'm going to be the only one who uses the "Dude Shepard" and "Lady Shepard" nomenclature, but they're practically begging people to evoke the 80s classic in DA2.

Ladyhawke (sans Rutger Hauer, alas!) looks pretty awesome, the new Qunari wild. I never thought I'd consider Sten "the cuddly one".

This.

I don't think we have any choice but to use this name.

I think I've seen that used elsewhere. Noted.

I wasn't initially sold on the graphic direction they were going with, but those new screenshots are very purdy. I guess the stylised look is a good was of dodging the uncanny valley.

oilypenguin wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:
Scratched wrote:

Including FemHawke

I can accept that I'm going to be the only one who uses the "Dude Shepard" and "Lady Shepard" nomenclature, but they're practically begging people to evoke the 80s classic in DA2.

Ladyhawke (sans Rutger Hauer, alas!) looks pretty awesome, the new Qunari wild. I never thought I'd consider Sten "the cuddly one".

This.

I don't think we have any choice but to use this name.

That name makes me think of the singer rather than the movie - great, now I'm going to get My Delirium stuck in my head whenever I read about DA2.

Over at 1up there is the new Dragon Age 2 Save-Importing Explained article.

1up wrote:

Your choices in DA1 will still matter, even if you're playing as a new protagonist.

One of the coolest aspects of Mass Effect 2 is how many of the decisions you made as Shepard in the first game could be imported into the sequel. But with Dragon Age 2 introducing Hawke as the new playable character (as opposed to whatever generic "Warden" players created for themselves in the first game), it raised the question of whether save-importing would even be an option, and if so, how it would work. Well it is, and here's how.

"We look at it as importing the world really," said lead designer Mike Laidlaw in an interview with NowGamer. "I've always seen Dragon Age as a franchise as about more than any one character. It's about an entire span of history and the whole world that's affected by what happens. So that was our approach and I think the importing stays true to that in the sense that the decisions your Warden made and the person they were all affects Dragon Age 2."

So what kind of decisions will matter? "Who's in charge of Ferelden, what happened with the Dwarves, who's running Orzammar?" Laidlaw explains as examples. "All of these things are reflected and accounted for in Dragon Age 2."

Laidlaw also revealed that despite the Witch Hunt DLC for the first Dragon Age that was intended to provide closure to Morrigan's story, she'll still have a part to play in Dragon Age 2, as "she's not done with this world by any stretch of the imagination." And speaking of companions, Laidlaw also gave a few details of how building relationships with party members will differ this time with the addition of a "rivalry" system.

"[In] addition to being friends, its now an open choice for you to build up a consistent rivalry with someone and to tell them that no, it's their moral compass that is not correct and that you can actually have a real interaction around that rather than just them getting angry and storming off," he explained. "They will still do that, but it's not like a lose condition like it was in Origins."

Dragon Age 2 is set for release on March 8.

trueheart78 wrote:

Over at 1up there is the new Dragon Age 2 Save-Importing Explained article.

1up wrote:

So what kind of decisions will matter? "Who's in charge of Ferelden, what happened with the Dwarves, who's running Orzammar?" Laidlaw explains as examples. "All of these things are reflected and accounted for in Dragon Age 2."

That's nice, but will it make any difference to the player? If you have two different characters doing exactly the same thing, then I don't care.

Wrex vs. Not Wrex mattered a lot to me. One was my friend who I wanted to help by living up to my bad-ass rep. The other was some guy who made me was to leave as soon as possible. If you don't want to care about subtext, atmosphere, mood, nuance, etc, that's fine, but those are the changes you're getting so you may want to stop caring now.

Anyway, the rivalry thing sounds like a good bit of nuance.

Have they even patched that f*cking WITCH HUNT DLC yet?

If they're going to harp on about how your "decisions matter" in DA2, they can at least get THAT right.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

Wrex vs. Not Wrex mattered a lot to me. One was my friend who I wanted to help by living up to my bad-ass rep. The other was some guy who made me was to leave as soon as possible. If you don't want to care about subtext, atmosphere, mood, nuance, etc, that's fine, but those are the changes you're getting so you may want to stop caring now.

Anyway, the rivalry thing sounds like a good bit of nuance.

The thing is I don't play subtext, atmosphere, mood or nuance. They're fine to have in addition to the game, and as story telling tools, but Bioware have spent time and money on this save importing feature and it remains window-dressing to the game. Prince Whathisname and Lord Thingummer in Orzammar, or Wrex and Not Wrex (so important and such a brilliant characters we can't remember their names) might be completely different characters, and speak different lines, but unless it makes a difference to what I have to do in the game, or how I have to approach them in dialogue (see Alpha Protocol for how to do this) then it's wasted effort from my perspective.

Essentially the problem Bioware has is that they want to have their cake and eat it. They want to give 'choice' but not the consequences. They give you the option to kill a character, but when it comes around to the sequel they don't follow through. There's no diverging paths to Wrex/Not Wrex (yet - the mass effect series isn't finished), because they would have to make two separate chunks of content that different sets of players would see, and content is expensive. So what we've got is nearly the same content regardless of what you chose, which means I don't really care, and when I come around to play ME1 the next time Wrex can do whatever he wants on Virmire.

I'd rather have a brilliant linear game than an adequate flexible/multipath one

Scratched wrote:

I'd rather have a brilliant linear game than an adequate flexible/multipath one

Hence why I said "you might want to stop caring now" because that's not what you're getting.

This seem the eternal logic loop with our little subculture: everyone has very specific criteria for what counts as "changing the game world", and when those criteria aren't met, we insist that there wasn't actually change. The killer never changes in Heavy Rain, therefore you can't change the story. Forget the fact that any or all of the characters, including the killer, could die well before the end credits--by the insane cheat sheet only I can see, changing the identity of the killer is the only standard by which I will consider this game to "change". There isn't a different questline in Tuchanka, so change is window dressing--it doesn't matter that the presence of one NPC (who may well be a favorite from the first game) radically changes the political dynamic, making the fight with Worf not just a fight with a guy who's in your way, but a fight with a guy who's in your way and trying to demolish everything your favorite NPC is trying to do, a fight for your life, your NPC friend's life, and the very soul of the Krogan race! (Dun dun DUUUUUUN!).

I did see Alpha Protocol, played it even. The idea that at the end I could have led Special Agent Douchenugget to fight Evil Industrialist Who Cribbed his Plan from 24 S5 or the Director of Trying and Failing to be Morgan Freeman with Cool Design Girl Who Never Pays Off or Hotpants O'Traitorface (Hey! I can do it too!) at his side elicited "Heh. Cute. Too bad the world and these characters are so thin I don't really care about any of this. Think the 'Suave' option will actually be suave this time? Looks like not." I'm just not that dialectic, I guess. Regardless, when there's an Alpha Protocol 2 (snerk) I'll know what to expect. At then end of the day, change is what we make of it, and you're well established on record as making nothing of Bioware's.

It's a bit like going to the bank, I don't care what teller I'm using, I'll accomplish the same task. The NPCs in ME2 are just mission dispensers

The thing is with the DA/ME sequels that carry data along is that all this importing saves takes planning, scripting, getting the actors to do their part, making more than one NPC for the same role, linking all the assets together within the game and implementing the logic, testing all the permutations which multiply with each sequel you continue to, all for a different mission dispenser.

If it was something like Grunt being disallowed the ritual and not gaining loyalty because Not Wrex didn't believe in it, or a completely different set of missions from either of the possible Orzammar kings because they've got different agendas, then it will mean something. As it's currently implemented it's a case of randomly picking just to get your objective complete, get an army from the treaty obligation or make your Krogan feel better about himself.

On the Alpha Protocol reference, whether or not you thought it was a good game your decisions throughout the game would make a big difference in the path you took, and who was friends or enemies to you.

Again, we get it. It's too bad you don't want to engage the ME or DA world beyond the bank level, because they've put a lot of work into the background details of both, though you're certainly not alone in not caring. But designers can only lead a horse to water, not make it drink.

Calling the differences in AP "big" is pretty generous--I fight different people on my way up the arcade ladder in fighting games too. For me, the thinness of the characters, how little actual interaction I had with any of them, the lack of engagement in the world, all these made the endgame painfully transparent and often arbitrary, stole the magic, and left me with nothing to hold onto. There was no joy. If over the course of DA2 I run into four kids playing Warden, each taking on a role determined by how much damage a party member did in DA:O, that'll give me joy.

I'd rather have subtle well done context changes that sloppily done paths.

Hmmmm, this is ...something... and I'm not sure I like it.

http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/inf...

Limited Time Offer – get $20 of bonus content at NO ADDITIONAL COST! Pre-order Dragon Age II before January 11, 2011 and receive an automatic upgrade to the BioWare Signature Edition–a special, collector's edition version of the game that contains loads of additional content, exclusives, and other perks. This special edition version of Dragon Age II is only available before January 11, so pre-order now!

Contains the full version of Dragon Age II plus $20 of additional content including:

* A download code for a bonus playable character and missions
* Downloadable game soundtrack
* Exclusive in-game digital armory featuring multiple weapons
* Additional downloadable items

Gives the whole 'OMG they're stripping out content and selling it to you' faction some real ammo.

There is realistically very little chance of me not pre-ordering the game, but if you don't pre-order there's no reason to buy until the Ultimate Edition comes out a year later.

It makes me think a bit, because I was planning on waiting to get DA2 and get The Witcher 2 at release. On the other hand, there's no standard edition and collectors edition (yet), so it comes down to whether you think the content (and details on the content is thin on the ground) is worth putting your money down for, or if you don't mind picking it up later.

It does come across as a bit of a d*ck move. I'm inclined to say that pre-orders must be struggling and they haven't given people enough reason from what they've shown of DA2 to be excited enough to pre-order. The marketing for DA:O sucked, and it seems it sucks again if pre-orders aren't happening for DA2, so this seems a bit between a bribe and blackmail to get people off the fence.

I wouldn't mind if it was a standard/collectors edition distinction, and available to choose once it comes out, I think I'm going to join the DLC pessimists for this one and wait for deals or compilations. Offers like this should make me say "I want that", not suspicious. Marketing should show the game and make me count the days until release.

Early 2011 is a crowded time, Portal 2, The Witcher 2, Deus Ex Human Revolution are on my list and higher up than DA2.

Y'know, it's seeming to me that despite the large numbers of special editions, the art of the Making-Of DVD is going the way of Instruction Manuals. I may not have been sold on Oblivion, but that making-of DVD was AWESOME. I still love watching the one for Halo 2 every now and then. However, Fable 2 was a huge disappointment because it was just all the online developer diaries mashed together, which weren't allowed to show TOO much due to potential spoilers.

I don't even know if Gears 2 has a making of DVD in its limited edition. If it did and I watched it, the impression wasn't really left. I should double check.

But yeah, if they tell me I'm getting $20 of content for free, I'd like some of that to be a making-of DVD, especially if a Bioware game is involved.

I'm sure we had this out in the collectors edition thread a while back, but as far as I'm concerned if you've seen one 'making of' video, you've seen them all. Very rarely do they show anything really unique or special to their game, or as you say hasn't been used as marketing elsewhere. Like many things in games, it's something that has the potential to be awesome if done right, but most places are just factories for games and marketing just wants ten minutes of talking heads saying how the (blank) really brings out the compelling viscreality and (blank) in the (blank), and is something that's never been attempted in any other game.

If there was a 'making of' that was more than a film crew pestering the leads for a day, and embedded themselves in the studio or was filmed by the developers, from the start of the project until going gold, then that could be quite good.

Scratched wrote:

I'm sure we had this out in the collectors edition thread a while back, but as far as I'm concerned if you've seen one 'making of' video, you've seen them all. Very rarely do they show anything really unique or special to their game, or as you say hasn't been used as marketing elsewhere. Like many things in games, it's something that has the potential to be awesome if done right, but most places are just factories for games and marketing just wants ten minutes of talking heads saying how the (blank) really brings out the compelling viscreality and (blank) in the (blank), and is something that's never been attempted in any other game.

If there was a 'making of' that was more than a film crew pestering the leads for a day, and embedded themselves in the studio or was filmed by the developers, from the start of the project until going gold, then that could be quite good.

Yeah, I find 'making of' videos a huge snooze. Even in the best scenarios it's a bunch of guys doing mo-cap and modeling and rendering, there's really nothing to watch there. IMO.

The more I think about this thing the less I like it. Dragon Age is one of my favourite games of all time, but now I'm seriously considering waiting a whole year to get the complete version of the sequel and to not reward what I consider a pretty repulsive action.

I'm sure tons will buy it on day one, but I wonder how many sales they are burning with this. If you're informed and want to get the best out of it, you either pre-order because you're confident you're going to like it, or wait until a bundle comes along.

If you're not sure, you're worse off buying it just after release, and it will cost you 20 bucks to get something equivalent to the early adopters. I know I'd feel buyers remorse if I didn't really like it after that.

Having said that, their DLC for Origins has been hit or miss, so chances are it's not a major loss. It also raises the question if they can cut it out of the main game, how good is it, and indicates that because it's optional it cannot be central to the story, which makes me care less about it.