Too much effort.

I'm not voting here because I didn't pick up Isabela or the DLC guy and told Fenris to go fuck himself, and I'm still debating whether it's worth replaying to see what I missed (probably not), but out of the people I had, Aveline was the only character who accomplished anything during those ten years and also the only character I gave a fuck about. I'm actually rather surprised at how much I liked her.

Jandice is probably the worst. I liked them better when one was Alistair 2.0 and the other was some kind of crazy undead thing I could leave in my castle and ignore for the rest of the game.

B^U

...as horrible as it feels to admit, I can't find anything wrong with the last two.

I don't get the first one, though. Unless the joke is that you will never again be able to select an answer that detailed because picking either "hurf", "durf" or "derp" on the dialogue wheel is THE NEW SHIT.

Honestly, I have no idea what CDTLHLA.spl is, and megamods aren't really my table.

Since the bigg is responsible for the code here, he might have some idea. Otherwise, probably better to ask on the megamod board.

And that's not all!

http://mod.gib.me/dr...mo/inventory.7z

Extract this to My Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age 2 Demo\

Unlocks journal, map, and inventory menus.

You can actually use all the crap you pick up on Mudhill Mountain now!



...pity about the lack of hat models, though.

Hooboy. I tried starting on nightmare and it crashed just as the first encounter began. OOPS.

I think I've figured out what bothers me the most about this demo. THIS THING.



Everything is disabled, why do you keep trying?! Not that it does you any good, because you're listed under "lol no" in the firewall, but still.

The game import function is... semi-functional.



I dunno. Hopefully they've managed to fix that for the final version.

Also, large image here, but hahaha they weren't kidding when they were talking about skin tone problems.




Edit: well that was simple, first try



...I spent most of the time running in circles with whatever character the enemies hated most at the time while the rest pelted them with ranged stuff. The healing spell has a long-ass cooldown and you get like six potions total; that wasn't enough for me, but maybe if I'd configured my tactics (didn't touch that screen) and/or cared a little more about what my party was doing, they'd have lasted longer. That talk about the highest difficulty only being "theoretically possible" is a load of bull, and I can only assume that it's because the people at Bioware suck horribly at playing these games... which would also explain most of the changes they've been making.

Updated feb 28, 2011

Added:
W_PackMule by Kwiat_W

http://www.tineye.com/

http://hellstern.dev...ullesS-87384498

Flawless victory.

Ahahahahahahaha. Im in ur demo, haxing ur files!










Oh, and did I mention it's full of spoilers?

Because it is.

Full of spoiles.

Okay, here's a funny thing that happened on the rogue attempt.



He keeps trying and trying, but he can't seem to get off that ledge!

...I should have started capturing earlier, but I was just kind of staring at it for a while.

(To clarify earlier statement: when I say "plays like Origins", I mean DA:O's easymode and nothing else.)

Okay, tried fighter and rogue.

Fighter is boring. And easy.

Rogue is a little more involved and seems to both take and deal more damage, but looks dumb with the flipping and teleporting.

Still not impressed.

Edit:

I did experience sorrow when Wesley died, which I did not expect to do. My character knew him for what? A few hours?

It's like fifteen minutes at most.

the absurdity of that small dagger going through sturdy templar armor

I forgot to mention that, but yeah, my thoughts exactly. There are much easier ways to kill someone in full plate, especially when they're not resisting, but it wouldn't be as ~*~DRAMATIC~*~ I guess.

Also, suspension of disbelief is a prerequisite: Mama Hawke harboring and training not one but two mage apostates from the Chantry for all those years in Lothering??  I mean, templars aren't always the sharpest tools in the shed, but you gotta give them *some* credit.

"Remember not to throw fireballs in front of strangers."
"Yes, mother... "

Is it my imagination, or do the choices given on the dialogue wheel bear absolutely no resemblance to what the character actually says?

It's not just you.

Replacing the traditional dialogue choices with that fucking useless wheel is THE single worst decision the DA2 devs made.

And I have lots of problems with the decisions they made.

THE ORDER DICTATES I FIGHT LIKE A SPARTAN.

Managed to play on max settings with DirectX11.

The demo does not support DX11. Turn that shit off.

If you're talking about M&B, you can win even against an army that outnumbers you 5 to 1; it depends a lot on your tactics (and the quality of your vs. the enemy troops).

Nah, I was thinking about improving DA2. That does sound interesting, though. I should check it out.

You should try Mount and Blade: Warband if you want realistically brutal combat. Both your enemies and you can die / go unconscious with a single well-placed hit.

Since the enemies tend to outnumber you two or three to one in every fight, that might also be problematic. Somewhere in between would be ideal.

RPGs have never been about realistic combat. There are a few exceptions, but generelly developers don't really bother with it.

I don't care about "realistic" as long as I get "entertaining". Watching my character repeat the same four-hit combo for 30 seconds before the enemy decides to fall over is neither of those.

(...granted, this might not have been so much of a problem if the game hadn't decided that since I put my first skill point in healing, I must not want any damaging magic at all, ever, and gave me a bunch of useless support spells post timeskip.)


Edit: also, the characters run too slowly out of combat. Maybe there's a tweak for that somewhere...

Gameplay is... basically the same as DA:O. After about 1.3 playthroughs of DA:O, I'm pretty bored with it already.

Grunts take too much damage. It was a bother in Origins, and it's a bother here. In the last part, I counted 22 hits from my mage to kill a generic nameless archer. TWENTY FUCKING TWO HITS. With my buff spell up. Not difficult, tedious.

Yes, that twirly-spinny attack sequence is getting old already.

No, I still don't care that Bethany dies, try giving her ACTUAL LINES before killing her and maybe I'll give a shit.

No, I don't care about Carver either. Why is he my "rival" again?

No, the icons on the dialogue wheel aren't enough to replace full text choices. The "put him out of his misery" option results in "whatever you're going to do, do it quickly". Okay...?

Half the skill trees are locked, probably because Bioware assumes you're too dumb to figure out how they're used.


...It's better than I expected, but I've basically set my expectations for this game so low that they could have mailed me a piece of poo on a plate and I'd probably say the same thing.

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.

I'm not blaming him for the decision. I'm not blaming Bioware for it, either.

I am blaming him for being a prick, not just in this thread, but basically every time I see him post. Also, blaming Bioware for allowing him to continue.

This is at least the second time people working for them have answered "why isn't there an option to ____" questions with "because y'all are too dumb to live" and it looks fucking bad.

We chose to set the game [demo] at the default, or normal, difficulty. This prevents people from accidentally setting the difficulty too easy or too hard. We do not want to give people the wrong impression about combat by having them accidentally setting it to nightmare and then choosing not to buy as the demo was too hard to play.

We trust that our fans are smart enough to know that if the demo seems good but a tad easy, they can always choose to increase the difficulty in the real game.

OUR CUSTOMERS ARE ALL RETARDS. ALL! RETARDS!

edit: he just closed the thread.

Hey, there's a new DLC item!

I'm just going to let this one speak for itself.

Last thing I heard, Bioware asked giZm to stop putting up demo vids, but it seems he uploaded parts four and five anyway.

Someone posted the talent trees on the Bioware boards.

Generally, I like the trees better than the paths in Origins, but some of the skills, like Adamant, have so many requirements that it feels a bit like they're missing the point of having talent trees to begin with. There's not too many of them though, so it looks okay I guess.

Damned free items, why must you taunt me so?

If you have to spend time and effort to obtain them, they are not free.

Especially not if it's boring time and effort.

I don't understand what you m-



EDIT: Now with content!

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.)

Get your day 1 DLC items 3748 and 3749 here! Get'em while they're uh DLC-y!

Edit edit: or I could just link to the page or something idk that might work

Presumably it would have been over faster if he hadn't let his entire party die, but... uh.

Also features the plot-forced death of a character they've given you no reason to care about whatsoever! Don't miss it!

Edit:

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

No, I have the ability to smell digital bullshit before even opening a thread.

But yeah, I took a quick look. What I saw wasn't very impressive.

...yeah. Uh. Oops.


So! Dragon Age 2 is still going to suck, right?

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

I was thinking more along the lines of "narrow-minded", but eh, close enough, I guess.

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

Here, I was thinking mostly "confusing". Speaking of which, I notice you haven't bothered to explain why a bisexual character "isn't so good", but that's okay; I wasn't really expecting a rational explanation anyway.

bigotry

Pot, kettle, overused idiom.

Also stop reading the short stories thread after the stories themselves, the rest is crap.

I'd probably just recommend against reading the thread at all.

Does anyone else find it kinda cheesy they are reusing so many previous npcs?

Having returning npcs is a good thing... if it makes sense. So far, all the returning characters have prompted a reaction along the lines of "what :|" from me, so.

That's strange: given that Jaheira's author, Luke K., was writing Aveline, I was sure she'd be a romance-option-Jaheira-number-two. I guess they didn't want to do the "romance with the former husband barely cool in the grave" thing again.

Given the time span, this could potentially be handled much better than it was in BG2.

Fenris is probably a male-male interest, which isn't so good, either.

i'm sure you have a perfectly reasonable explanation for that statement

I hope they have features like ME2 when you've gone Renegade your eyes turn red and you have those synthetics showing up! Or I miss that somewhere?

There is no morality meter in DA2. That's like the only good thing they've told us about this game.