Dragon Age 2 - Catch All

I say console it up... on the console, that is. I put in my 50 hours (on the 360) and then got 2/3rds of the way through a second go-around on casual but I am not made for this kind of combat. It's either too much fuss and trickery (20 hours of my first playthrough probably consisted of me uncloaking and then pied-pipering darkspawn into ambushes) on normal or not interesting at all on casual when I just wanted to speed things up and see different aspects of the story. Meanwhile I am a Mass Effect WHORE. So...

Agreed. Part of the fun of DA was lording both the higher difficulty and better battles over the poor console players.

The irony of this thread Female Doggoing about the graphics with the other thread lamenting the shift to 3D

garion333 wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:

It just wouldn't be a DA release without sturm and drang and worry over screenshots and the like. I almost cross my fingers for another trailer with a played-out 90's metal maestro. Maybe some Alice In Chains this time.

Blasphemy! Alice in Chains is not played out! Go with Stone Temple Pilots instead..

Agreed.

I considered them, but thought AiC was closer to Marilyn Manson than STP, but fair 'nuff, fair 'nuff. I think Spec Ops has already laid claim to "The Rooster" anyway. Surely we're all in agreement the song of choice, in deference to tradition, must be "Sex Type Thing".

Scratched wrote:

"The PC version implements the same strategic approach afforded by a mouse-and-keyboard control scheme," but "rather than try to mimic the PC experience on consoles, Dragon Age II has a battle system more tailored to the strengths of the PS3 and 360."

That's the article that got me worried in the first place: I play this on a 360. I don't need an experience anymore tailored to the console: pressing X to execute a shield bash was just enough, same as I like how the game pauses in Valkyria Chronicles when in Target Mode. I like these kind of 'hybrid' games--I want to see more the them, not less.

It's BioWare, though, so I'll probably like it the same way I got over no inventory in ME2 after a couple of hours.

More concept art here: http://greywardens.com/2010/07/new-d...

I'm not sure why they think the stylized polygon spike armor looks good. Even though DA1 was overall a pretty drab game, the armor was one of the nicely rendered bits. Now they've replaced it with this weird jutting mess.

Huh.

This is pretty cool
IMAGE(http://greywardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/conceptart005.jpg)

but everything else looks like they gave it the MMO treatment.

I think the crude spiky armour style works well enough for the darkspawn. It's not as though they've got master craftsmen working for them or that there's normally ogre sized armour to scavenge.

TheGameguru wrote:

The irony of this thread Female Doggoing about the graphics with the other thread lamenting the shift to 3D

I don't know that I would call it Female Doggoing. People have generally said they're not impressed, but don't really care.

I feel for the console guys who will be playing with a close perspective, but I won't even see the armour.

To be honest, I've never been able to enjoy the over-the-head-point-and-click style of gameplay anyway, but I've never been much of a strategy gamer. I enjoy Master of Orion 2 well enough, as well as Nobunaga's Ambition II for the NES (alas, back when they made PC-esque strategy games for consoles...), but otherwise I've preferred being the guy in the battlefield. As it was I felt the A.I. controls for Dragon Age were incredibly robust and the issues with the higher difficulties were more a problem with balancing. I'd have moments that were easy as ball-fondling followed by OH MY GOD IT'S KILLING ME WITH MY OWN FEET!

Of course, the one thing I would LOVE is for the abilities to be mapped a bit more similarly to how Sacred 2: Fallen Angel managed to on console. That way I don't have to pick and choose between six abilities but instead have maybe 9 or 12 available.

New preview from a German magazine, Gamestar. Couple of new screenshots. The fire looks better in my opinion, and it looks like they spent a lot of time putting in dynamic pooling of blood.

http://greywardens.com/2010/07/drago...

Wait a moment. Didn't we kill Flemmeth, or is it just the whole "I'm going to use the body of my child to continue living" thing and killing her was a diversion.

Scratched wrote:

Wait a moment. Didn't we kill Flemmeth, or is it just the whole "I'm going to use the body of my child to continue living" thing and killing her was a diversion.

You don't have to.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
Scratched wrote:

Wait a moment. Didn't we kill Flemmeth, or is it just the whole "I'm going to use the body of my child to continue living" thing and killing her was a diversion.

You don't have to.

Also, as I recall, Morrigan wanted Flemmeth's spell book in the hope she could find a way to protect herself from being taken over. Killing Flemmeth was a stalling tactic.

Latrine wrote:

New preview from a German magazine, Gamestar. Couple of new screenshots. The fire looks better in my opinion, and it looks like they spent a lot of time putting in dynamic pooling of blood.

http://greywardens.com/2010/07/drago...

I think it's quite obvious from those pictures that they weren't taken from the PC version. The aliasing in the second pic is pretty bad on the swords.

I think the lighting is what's bothering me about all these pics. Other than shadows below people, the lighting looks, well, nonexistent.

Might as well post the images:

IMAGE(http://greywardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/screenshot004.jpg)

IMAGE(http://greywardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/screenshot003.jpg)

They look quite bad , but it must be a lack of various effects such as AA? Can't be Biowares goal for the game.

I think the environment looks a bit crap too. I appreciate the change in scenery with the new location, but the ground is very plain with high detail characters fighting on it, the background also frames the movement area very obviously, and it's quite boring and plain as well.

I'm not sure about the lighting personally, you can see the sun low in the sky but they've got short shadows as if it should be higher, also the rest of the environment is very diffuse while the characters have sharp shadows. I've nothing against soft diffuse lighting, even going so far to say sharp dark shadows are overused by a lot of games, but the scene really should look consistent.

I guess these pictures are just showing off people fighting, but they're not doing a good job of showing the whole package.

To be honest, I'm annoyed I keep picking the screenshots apart. It's still early in development, but I suppose since it's Dragon Age 2 I would like to think they could pull out some better looking screenshots earlier on in the development cycle. Regardless, it's not like I'm going to stop following the game's progress or anything.

Honestly, they look to me like they're in the Fade.

garion333 wrote:

It's still early in development, but I suppose since it's Dragon Age 2 I would like to think they could pull out some better looking screenshots earlier on in the development cycle.

I don't know. Given the March 2011 date, that's 8 months until it ships. Origins was supposedly finished in March before it shipped in November, another 8 months gap. Given that March date would be when they start moving starting some early production on DA2, and even then they're building on the base of what they created for Origins. Saying it's early is a bit optimistic.

I'm sure there will be changes, but not major ones. Given the complexity of the game and getting it through QA/certification for 3 platforms they're likely to lock down the content early to get it bugfixed/polished.

That last shot brings back memories of Sword of the Berserk.

Wish I hadn't seen these screenshots. Still have faith in the final product.

Scratched wrote:
garion333 wrote:

It's still early in development, but I suppose since it's Dragon Age 2 I would like to think they could pull out some better looking screenshots earlier on in the development cycle.

I don't know. Given the March 2011 date, that's 8 months until it ships. Origins was supposedly finished in March before it shipped in November, another 8 months gap. Given that March date would be when they start moving starting some early production on DA2, and even then they're building on the base of what they created for Origins. Saying it's early is a bit optimistic.

I'm sure there will be changes, but not major ones. Given the complexity of the game and getting it through QA/certification for 3 platforms they're likely to lock down the content early to get it bugfixed/polished.

Polish is what takes the game from looking like a game to looking awesome. Those screenshots don't seem to have good lighting and definitely lack polish. I don't expect there to be monumental changes, but what we've seen so far look kind of empty.

Regarding the reaction to the gameplay changes, a writer for the game politely tells critics to STFU.

MeatMan wrote:

Regarding the reaction to the gameplay changes, a writer for the game politely tells critics to STFU.

To which I would reply - if they didn't want that kind of feedback and reaction then they shouldn't be releasing cryptic , controversial snippets of non-info and half-finished screenshots in advance of a proper reveal of the game.

hah...just read this on that social network thread

Akizora wrote...

The world is changing, I feel it in the earth, I feel it in the water, I smell it in the air. Much that once was is now
forgotten; for none now live who remember it.

It began with the making of the great games: Three of Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights were given to the oldschool RPG-fans, the most dedicated and loyal of all beings. Two of Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire were given to the new generation of RPG fans, great gamers and players of the new era. And Two were passed to the race of men, who above all else desire power and were thus given Mass Effect.

The oldschool RPG-fans rejoiced upon the release of Dragon Age: Origins and as did all the other races.

...But they were all of them decieved for another game was made: in the halls of Bioware, in the fires of Internet Hate, the dark lord Gaider forged, in secret, a master game to control all others. And into this game he poured his cruelty, his malice, and his will to dominate all life....This game was Dragon Age 2

Game Informer has a timeline up. Not as interesting as some of the other info, but info nonetheless.

Btw, I think "Tevinter Imperium" is one of the better names they've come up with for their history. I also liked the Chantry once I read where that came from. Kinda clever.

TheGameguru wrote:

The irony of this thread Female Doggoing about the graphics with the other thread lamenting the shift to 3D

Isn't that, like, the opposite of ironic though?

Yeah, most of the timeline is stuff you can get from playing Dragon Age. I do like how they put in some information on Kirkwall's history since it'll obviously be more important in DA2.

stevenmack wrote:
MeatMan wrote:

Regarding the reaction to the gameplay changes, a writer for the game politely tells critics to STFU.

To which I would reply - if they didn't want that kind of feedback and reaction then they shouldn't be releasing cryptic , controversial snippets of non-info and half-finished screenshots in advance of a proper reveal of the game.

Sums up my feelings on it. EA/Bioware need to take their current marketing team out behind the shed, so to speak. If this game is such a big deal, the marketing and materials released for it should be brilliant and make people salivate at the mention of DA2, currently it's a big WTF.

I thought the game was going to be released in February 2011, like how my little flyer in my game case says. The article says March... lies!