You mean, women who won't ever date a knowingly bisexual guy are Evil?

And wishing that a bisexual love interest was straight is Bad?

bigotry

I'll admit that I haven't been very attentive toward every bit of info released in this thread, but is this what's been confirmed for DAII? If so, then, uh, wow, that is kinda lame :/.

Friendly fire is only on Nightmare. There were discussions on it months ago (including toggles, having it not be toggle-able in certain modes, and even locked difficulty levels) and that was the decision that was reached.

For reference, here are our current goals for difficulty balance:

Casual - Able to be beaten playing a single character sub-optimally, with the rest of the party using default AI tactics.

Normal - Able to be beaten playing a single character optimally, with the rest of the party using default AI tactics.

Hard - Able to be beaten playing the entire party sub-optimally, either controlling directly or using custom AI tactics.

Nightmare - Able to be beaten playing the entire party optimally, either controlling directly or using custom AI tactics. Friendly fire active.

Which makes me wonder where the rest of us are to prove them wrong.

I'll admit that Gaider may be a wee bit condescending there, but, to be fair, DAO was set up that way, too (no friendly fire in easy mode, and only 1/2 damage from friendly fire in norm, if I ain't mistaken.) Did you have a problem with that, as well? Personally, I wouldn't have a problem if DAII was set up much the same way.

Warrior basic attacks will have FF on Nightmare, but against party members it will only deal glancing blows (1/10th damage).

So.... I guess you had to read it to find out...?

I doubt he made that decision - people higher up in the chain of command decided that the demo shouldn't feature a difficulty slider, and he had to invent a mildly credible explanation for the limitation.

Call to Arms!

February 22, 2011 marks the launch of the Dragon Age II Demo and a Call to Arms for all BioWare fans. We are actively recruiting an army of Champions, and if we get over 1 million demo downloads and logins on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 combined before March 1st, we will unlock two in-game items for the entire community to use in Dragon Age II. Demo download progress will be tracked on this page, so check back often!

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

The items that will be unlocked are:

The Far Cliffs of Kirkwall - Written by a Fereldan refugee as she fled the Blight, this book of poems describes her dreams of a new start in Kirkwall, the city across the sea. Readers will surely be enriched by her insights. (Gives money when read.)
Lothering's Lament

Lothering's Lament - Written by a Fereldan refugee as she fled the Blight, this book of poems contains touching reminiscences of all she had to leave behind. Readers will surely benefit from her experience. (Gives XP boost when read.)

Because it has a profound effect on the difficulty. Hence it being attached to the difficulty.

Or that, anyhow, is what I assume. Attaching things to toggles is great, but if someone flips that on and doesn't know that it will suddenly make their "Easy" game not quite so Easy anymore... well, that wouldn't be good.

Dragon Age 2: Darker, Grittier, Sexier...now with training wheels! Weeee!

Well, trailer Hawke has been confirmed to be using blood magic, I believe, so I think we can guess that's going to be an option, at the very least.

*Goes off to dislike Bethany some more. If anyone else watched Buffy and has been annoyed by Dawn/read Harry Potter and has been annoyed by Ginny, you know how I feel.*

Bioware can do much better.

Damn, this looks awful! Better make sure they buy it quick, before the reviews come out!

blood magic forced specialization

*stuff*

@ the growing (and, perhaps, justified) skepticism in this thread.

(Good thing I had no expectations for this game or anything!)

I am a colossal idiot!

Since it's a little unclear - you can still pull the camera back and then adjust the yaw, which would allow for a fairly-close-to top-down camera perspective. You aren't stuck with varying degrees of over-the-shoulder.

Hey folks.

Thought I would slide in here to clarify this last query:

The camera is attached to your currently controlled character. It may be rotated freely.

While we likely won't pull as far up as we did in DA:O, I have always felt that the key to tactical play was actually freeing your camera from the character you're controlling to issue precise orders, which is what we're tuning now. So, this means you can still maneuver the camera around the battlefield and issue orders from a remote location, just as you could in Origins.

belts

Edit - @vilkacis You missed the pearl from Mr Priestly that apparently DA2 is an action RPG and not a dating sim.  I imagine that means no dinner, wine or flowers before the action part.

I seems stupid for a tank to wear simple clothing. And for 10 years too

She would agree. So she doesn't. wink.png

Spoiler

Alright, just finished reading the DA2 article in my GI mag. WARNING! I am going to be posting some of the things that really stand out. (To me anyway) So if you don't want to know, skip my post.

1) We will be able to import our DA:O games into DA2.

2) We will see Flemeth at some point.

3) Pissing off party members won't always be a bad thing. "They won't necessarily leave. They may still join you, but they're going to try to show you up, and that may influence battle in a different way."

4) We're getting the ME2 conversation wheel, but this time instead of having some dialogue be a particular color the center of the wheel will show a symbol to show what kind of reply it is. (The article uses the examples of them being something like aggressive or sarcastic)

5) The way the story unfolds will be very different compared to the past Bioware games. "Dragon Age II has a framed narrative structure, which means that the exploits of Hawke occured in the past, but are being retold in the present." "Narrators with unique insights into the events in question tell the tale of his past adventures."

6) We may get to see some of the DA:O events at the start from a different perspective. "Dragon Age II begins as the events of Origins are still taking place, so you may see some familiar events from a different angle."

7) Because of the game spanning a decade, we get to see the consequences of our actions sooner, rather than in a little text at the end of the game.

8) The PC version's combat system remains mostly the same. "The PC version implements the same strategic approach afforded by a mouse-and-keyboard control scheme." "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."