Dragon Age 2 - Catch All

Does this mean that I can now jump all over you, too? How dare you impugn the honor of Bioware, etc, etc.!

Mex wrote:

Actually honestly I didn't get like 90% of what was going on (Why does the guy have to die? He's turning into a monster?),

He's infected with the blight after being wounded by a darkspawn weapon - which will eventually turn him into a mindless ghoul before eventually killing him. Not entirely sure how THAT works, since naturally this doesn't seem to effect anyone in YOUR party when they get wounded or knocked down, despite none of them being Grey Wardens - the only ones who have any sort of immunity to it.

I don't mind if you can't change their clothes, but I hope they do change from 1 point in time to another and I really hope you can change their stats, for instance tank have more resistances than stamina ect.

Is the point with NPC equipment about changing clothes, though? For whatever cool or ridiculous factor was inherent in what armor/robes I put on my NPC party members, it was a decision *I* got to make for *my* characters, and it was one that affected how I played them in the game. I really dislike it when developers decide the best way to deal with an issue is to remove gameplay instead of improve it.

The funny thing is, with Origins, there wasn't any story thread "to be continued..." for DA2, DA2 is it's own thing. If they wanted to make a new, different, game they could have distinguished it under a new name or brand, or a different subtitle under the Dragon Age branding ("DA: Kirkwall"?). To say "Dragon Age 2" implies a direct sequel to Origins, which I'd say it's safe to assume is DA1, and I'd also say it's usually safe to assume a direct sequel is going to be very similar to the first game.

I guess they've established a brand for themselves, and this is just another example of flogging the brand rather than the game itself on it's own merits. It just feels like they don't want to make DA2 the same type of game that DA:O was, and are just keeping the aspects around for familiarity than because they belong.

On the other hand it's not DA:O 2. Awakening was actually Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening.
Arguing over names is a bit silly though.

It just seems they want to make a radically different game, but are constricted by putting it under the DA name and keeping enough of the old gameplay. One one hand they want to keep the fans of the original game, on the other they want a different audience.

I'm not under the impression that they're keeping elements of old gameplay to keep old fans in on the franchise. Getting rid of the tactical combat would have put paid to that almost singlehandedly. We don't know what they did keep since we don't have the game yet, but most of the things familiar in the new game could have been found in a bunch of other games. I think it's more likely that old designs are in simply because they themselves can only evolve so many parts of the game without going completely adrift.

I had not given any attention to the story specifics before playing the demo, so I did not know about Isabella.

Day One.

Blind_Evil wrote:

A lot of the changes, I've seen people saying they're just taking design decisions made for ME2 and running with them. I never bought into that. This sounds like they are indeed blindly following what the other team is doing. Blah.

Hey... maybe we will be forced to play Minecraft between missions in order to upgrade equipment?

SommerMatt wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

A lot of the changes, I've seen people saying they're just taking design decisions made for ME2 and running with them. I never bought into that. This sounds like they are indeed blindly following what the other team is doing. Blah.

Hey... maybe we will be forced to play Minecraft between missions in order to upgrade equipment?

SOLD.

I don't think there trying to make that different a game. It's got exactly the same gameplay, the conversation system is just how most modern RPG's work ,the quest structure will be the same and it's set in the same world. I can think of numerous games where the main character doesn't continue with the sequel. I can not see how radically different it's going to be.

Blind_Evil wrote:

A lot of the changes, I've seen people saying they're just taking design decisions made for ME2 and running with them. I never bought into that. This sounds like they are indeed blindly following what the other team is doing. Blah.

Sounds kind of like how the teams behind Madden and NCAA Football operate... And they're also owned by EA. Hmm.

Xeknos wrote:

Sounds kind of like how the teams behind Madden and NCAA Football operate... And they're also owned by EA. Hmm.

They're turning Dragon Age 2 into a football game?! Makes sense. I better go cancel my preorder while there's still time.

Xeknos wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

A lot of the changes, I've seen people saying they're just taking design decisions made for ME2 and running with them. I never bought into that. This sounds like they are indeed blindly following what the other team is doing. Blah.

Sounds kind of like how the teams behind Madden and NCAA Football operate... And they're also owned by EA. Hmm.

Bioware isn't owned by EA, EA just publishes and finances their current projects. Whether or not EA exerts any of the control that financing can bestow, who knows. I would guess that most of the "corporate" types of things we see EA studios do are because A) EA is a business and that's what they think is good business and B) the studios are headed up by business types that think it's good business too. The creative guys are probably not for some of the cross marketing.

It's back down to $49 on Amazon now, btw. It was at that price for a while, then was raised to $59, heh.

Latrine wrote:
Xeknos wrote:

Sounds kind of like how the teams behind Madden and NCAA Football operate... And they're also owned by EA. Hmm.

They're turning Dragon Age 2 into a football game?! Makes sense. I better go cancel my preorder while there's still time.

Dragon Age 2: Blood Bowl

Blind_Evil wrote:
Xeknos wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

A lot of the changes, I've seen people saying they're just taking design decisions made for ME2 and running with them. I never bought into that. This sounds like they are indeed blindly following what the other team is doing. Blah.

Sounds kind of like how the teams behind Madden and NCAA Football operate... And they're also owned by EA. Hmm.

Bioware isn't owned by EA, EA just publishes and finances their current projects. Whether or not EA exerts any of the control that financing can bestow, who knows. I would guess that most of the "corporate" types of things we see EA studios do are because A) EA is a business and that's what they think is good business and B) the studios are headed up by business types that think it's good business too. The creative guys are probably not for some of the cross marketing.

Umm.. I'm pretty sure EA owns them

http://kotaku.com/#!309937/ea-buys-bioware-pandemic

Oh, my bad. Not sure where I got that idea from.

I've wrote two long paragraphs about that demo but just decided to erase it all and say one thing:

Bioware, I really, really f*cking hate you right now for what you did. I've played that demo and it felt like murder of original DA:O was happening right before my eyes.

With DLC and expansions alone there's about 100+ hours of Dragon Age: Origins. More if you include mods.

I'm fine with them pushing out into a newish direction with the sequel. Vive la différence!

Finally played the demo on 360 last night. After nearly 200 hours with the original, I enjoyed the change-up.

Really thinking about taking a personal day shortly after it's released, and will not be cancelling my pre-order.

It was a pretty big risk, making Origins in the first place. As we've noted, it was a hardcore RPG at a time when there was a distinct drought of those. I don't know how often they do this in the gaming industry, but is it possible that when Origins got funded there was a provision for a second game, one more mainstream, to ensure some sort of profit in case the hardcore thing failed? Maybe Origins did well enough that they tacked the Dragon Age name on to what could have otherwise been a totally unrelated RPG (with that decision made early in the process, of course)?

I have absolutely no idea if there's any truth to that. Just kind of floating a guess here.

Certis wrote:

With DLC and expansions alone there's about 100+ hours of Dragon Age: Origins. More if you include mods.

I'm fine with them pushing out into a newish direction with the sequel. Vive la différence! :drink:

Yeah, I guess. I'm just really angry in what-game-it-could-have-been kind of way. If it was a new IP, I'd probably just shrug my arms and give it a pass. Or even enjoy it.

(I guess everybody reacted in similar fashion to announcement of Max Payne 3. "Sure, we know it's going to be a great game, but why did you have to murder old Max to make this?")

LobsterMobster wrote:

As we've noted, it was a hardcore RPG at a time when there was a distinct drought of those.

Really? Perhaps if you only look at North American console releases. Bioware have a name for themselves from their Infinity/Aurora engine games, but they're hardly the custodians of the genre.

LobsterMobster wrote:

It was a pretty big risk, making Origins in the first place. As we've noted, it was a hardcore RPG at a time when there was a distinct drought of those.

I disagree. First, it wasn't much of a risk as every RPG and game (have they made a non-rpg?) Bioware has sold has made money. Second, it was nowhere near a hardcore RPG, especially when you compare it with games like Baldur's Gate. They took Baldur's Gate and dumbed it down. They lowered the number in the party, they lowered the number of classes, lowered the number of quests (obviously they kinda had to with the transfer to 3d), and they lowered the number of skills and spells.

As I said before, I think the big difference between Origins and DA2 is in the basic design of the games: Origins was a dumbed down tactical rpg, and DA2 looks to be a smartened up action rpg.

In other news, it doesn't look like they're going to hit their million downloads of the demo. Right now they need 130k downloads by the end of the day.

OK, well, you guys should take that up with 2004 through 2009, when it was marketed as a return to hardcore CRPGs, and described like a hardcore CRPG, and advertised as an uncompromising and difficult hardcore CRPG, and discussed as something that might not ever make it to market because it's such a hardcore CRPG.

Just because it's not quite Baldur's Gate doesn't mean they weren't trying for a return to form. It was definitely closer than Dragon Age II, and I'll remind you that I still have my copy of DA2 pre-ordered. It's OK to talk about it without implying that it's total garbage, right?

Behold the DA2 marketing director:

LobsterMobster wrote:

It's OK to talk about it without implying that it's total garbage, right?

No!

Personally, while I'd like to have more of the same, I'm glad it's different.