658 replies to this topic

[Silvi]

I'm too afraid the game will be as much as a disappointment as the first part... I'll just watch a play-through on youtube first. Maybe if I'm convinced... for now all the info isn't too convincing though.

*saves money for ME3*

[Archmage Silver]

Season's greetings! I see that you've all been nice (and critical), so here are your updates for December.

News:
Gameplay @ YouTube
Fenris @ Dragon Age Wiki
Slavery in Thedas @ Grey Wardens
Customization vs. Personalization @ Grey Wardens
Dragon Age II: Fenris and Combat @ Grey Wardens
Edmonton Press Preview - DA II Preview @ RPG Fan
Edmonton Press Preview - DA II Preview @ Destructoid
Edmonton Press Preview - DA II Preview @ The Escapist
Hawke Speaks! (And Other Good Stuff) @ Grey Wardens
Staff of Parthalan Fixed - Redeem Yours @ BioWare Social
Dragon Age 2 PC System Specs Announced @ Grey Wardens

I have a bad feeling about this new char. I mean, both male characters we've seen are non-human, and Female Hawke is human. Which means she'll literally have to romance beneath her. Er... there will be a normal human male love interest, right? Right?

If I had to take a guess, it's going to be a qunari. Failing that, it's probably "I'm not Oghren" Varric. Hawke, Bethany/Carver, Isabela, Aveline... I think they're running out of room for humans as it is.

Fenris... I named Dog in my first playthrough Fenrir. Bloody ripoff.

I'll sell the upstart simian back to the magister who is after him for a pile of gold. (Never understood why a mage would keep an elf as a servant. Preposterous!) After I have his gold, I'll torch them with my superior fire spells. To the victor belong the spoils... and that is always me.

Someone on the Bioboards asks why friendly fire can't be a toggle. And why not? Well, you see:

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.

So basically, he just called his entire player base retards.

Thanks, Gaider! It's good to know you have such a high opinion of me!

Well, I pointed out earlier that that's what Gaider does with his work time... but maybe we should cut him some slack, most people are idiots. I don't expect Gaider to like developing ARPGs as much as to use the PR department guidelines when posting.

The gameplay is shit though, it looks like some generic Diablo clone. Is DA II competing in the same category as Dungeon Siege 3? It certainly looks like it, except for the fact that Dungeon Siege 3 seems to have better graphics.

System Requirements up on the DA2 FAQ

They expect me to upgrade to get to the recommended specs? I think not. I'll hold off upgrading until something more serious comes along.

I dont understand how some people could the game too hard on easy or normal...Just take the right party for your style of fighting and hard or Nightmare are pretty much a joke...It remains to be seen how hard or easy DA II will be...but if I had to guess it will be far easier

Yeah, I regret not playing my first playthrough on Nightmare as well. The only time I've had to drop out of Nightmare because of difficulty was when I didn't import enough potions for GoA's final battle (and no respec tomes). I had to finish it on Hard for the achievement.

I'm too afraid the game will be as much as a disappointment as the first part... I'll just watch a play-through on youtube first. Maybe if I'm convinced... for now all the info isn't too convincing though.

*saves money for ME3*

Origins was good in my opinion, if that's what you're referring to?

Speaking of ME3, I'll post the latest news in the ME forum after this.

[Archmage Silver]

This just in:
Edmonton Press Preview - Family in Dragon Age II @ Grey Wardens

[KIrving]

... one of your earliest party members is your sibling (your brother or sister, depending on what class you chose)...

The article is correct. You'll get Bethany if Hawke is a rogue or warrior (regardless of gender), and Carver if Hawke is a mage.

That's awesome, because I was just playing KOTOR2 and that is totally my favourite part of the game!

...OH WAIT.

Spoiler

Actually my favourite part of KOTOR2 was the number of characters I had no reason to trust or like, but was forced to recruit anyway for absolutely no reason. It's not like my inability to drop Handmaiden, Mira and G0T0 in the nearest sun nearly killed my interest in the game or anything!

Certain party members restricted depending on class. I hate that.

Spoiler

In KOTOR2 I wanted to drop kick Disciple. Except he probably would have enjoyed it and thanked my exile for the honour.

Season's greetings! I see that you've all been nice (and critical), so here are your updates for December.
Hawke Speaks! (And Other Good Stuff) @ Grey Wardens

Yeah...male Hawke speaks. Female Hawke is too busy in the kitchen making sandwiches.

[Vicen]

Yeah, I regret not playing my first playthrough on Nightmare as well. The only time I've had to drop out of Nightmare because of difficulty was when I didn't import enough potions for GoA's final battle (and no respec tomes). I had to finish it on Hard for the achievement.

Heh I myself had to beat that fight on Hard...I doubt we will even see half that difficultly in DA:2 at any point in the game

Edited by Vicen, 21 December 2010 - 10:02 PM.

[Kulyok]

I'll sell the upstart simian back to the magister who is after him for a pile of gold. (Never understood why a mage would keep an elf as a servant. Preposterous!) After I have his gold, I'll torch them with my superior fire spells. To the victor belong the spoils... and that is always me.

Go Archmange Silver! That's how real mages deal with things. (Me, I'm going to check if there's an opportunity to give Bethany to the templars, but that's just me).

And thank you for the updates. I couldn't get to destructoid site yesterday, and can't today, strangely enough. Anything good there?

With Fenris, I suspect it's Shale-3(or Justice-2). Shale was good, but Justice... not so much. Intriguing backstory, but bland personality. Eh. Good point about qunari love interest - while for Male Hawke it's obviously Jaheira-2(Aveline) and Isabella, for female Hawke it's... um. Hm, I wonder who Cassandra would interrogate if I refuse to take Varric into my party...

[Kulyok]

A very interesting interview here: http://www.rpgamer.c...gonage2int.html - I didn't know that Hawke's past(mother's and father's) would play a major role in the game. I mean, they told us he's but a simple refugee, yet somehow it is not so.

[Archmage Silver]

News:
Edmonton Press Preview - DA II Preview @ Zam
Edmonton Press Preview - DA II Preview @ ActionTrip
Edmonton Press Preview - DA II Preview @ GameZone
Edmonton Press Preview - DA II Preview @ RPG France

The other major gameplay change is less radical, but will probably be more well-received, and that's crafting. While the version of DA2 I played still had some crafting bugs, the system seems to make creating potions, weapons, etc. much less of a hassle in terms of time and inventory space. For example, instead of crafting items yourself, you order them from crafters who take the materials directly into their storage – that's right, no more being weighed down by carrying around 99 pieces of Elfroot. Fans will also probably appreciate additional tweaks such as being able to visit locations during day or night, on-the-fly stat calculations when choosing equipment/abilities, and a streamlined status menu.

Hey, an actual improvement!

I'll sell the upstart simian back to the magister who is after him for a pile of gold. (Never understood why a mage would keep an elf as a servant. Preposterous!) After I have his gold, I'll torch them with my superior fire spells. To the victor belong the spoils... and that is always me.

Go Archmange Silver! That's how real mages deal with things. (Me, I'm going to check if there's an opportunity to give Bethany to the templars, but that's just me).

And thank you for the updates. I couldn't get to destructoid site yesterday, and can't today, strangely enough. Anything good there?

With Fenris, I suspect it's Shale-3(or Justice-2). Shale was good, but Justice... not so much. Intriguing backstory, but bland personality. Eh. Good point about qunari love interest - while for Male Hawke it's obviously Jaheira-2(Aveline) and Isabella, for female Hawke it's... um. Hm, I wonder who Cassandra would interrogate if I refuse to take Varric into my party...

I've quoted the Destructoid article below. It's a pretty good read.

Spoiler

"Dragon Age 2 is not a brand new game; It's a better, more-refined version of Dragon Age: Origins," explained executive producer Mark Darrah during a recent press event at BioWare's Edmonton studio. Darrah's take on Dragon Age 2 should be heartening for anxious fans of the first, yet his take -- thus-far consistent with the larger marketing push -- seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

Since it was announced Dragon Age 2 has come under fire from ostensible fans for its changes to combat, player agency, dialogue, and continuity. "It's extrapolation to the worst possible extreme," a bemused Mike Laidlaw, lead designer, explained to me in a later interview.

For my money, insofar as my time with Dragon Age 2, Darrah's assessment is apt. Four hours isn't long enough to make a judgment call on what will probably be a sprawling narrative, but the basic mechanics are as sound as, if not better than, their predecessors.

Dragon Age 2 begins with an interrogation: Varric -- dwarven crossbowman, entrepeneur, ne'er-do-well -- is being rough handled by Cassandra, a templar looking for information on the Champion of Kirkwall. This Champion is Hawke, an attractive female rogue with red hair and emerald eyes, and Varric supposedly knows where she is. The dwarf begins his testimony:

Hawke and her family are fleeing the destruction of Lothering but find themselves cornered by darkspawn. They cut down the darkspawn lines easily, stopping only to make grandiloquent speeches to reaffirm their determination. Hawke and her brother slaughter wave after wave of darkspawn and easily butcher an ogre before unleashing a dragon to destroy the rest of the hor--

"Bullshit!" Cassandra rudely interrupts. "Tell me what really happened."

Varric restarts his story.



Better killing through holistic design

Varric's hyperbolic account of Hawke's escape from Lothering functions in two ways -- it serves as the game's tutorial while establishing Dragon Age 2's narrative conceit.

In Varric's version of events Hawke is decked out in impressive armor, carrying what look like a pair of bat'leth. She and her brother face three distinct waves of darkspawn, and their respective skills get more impressive after each wave. Neither Hawke nor her brother, Carver, can die during the introduction, and there are plenty of enemies to go around -- the result is a safe arena for new players to explore different skills and familiarize themselves with the basics of tactical pausing, camera operation, and hot-keyed abilities.

You'll notice, perhaps, that the fundamentals of combat in Dragon Age 2 haven't changed much vis-a-vis their Origins counterparts. Mark Darrah's go-to comment on the combat has been that, "When you push a button, something awesome happens." But Darrah needs clarification: the presentation layer has changed, but the mechanics haven't. Dragon Age 2 is still a stat-driven, Dungeons and Dragons-based game -- replete with inventory screens, if-then tactical Rube Goldberg machines, and little numbers coming out of heads.

Standard melee attacks trigger a little bit faster -- thanks in large part to smoother animations -- and while it looks like a kind of combo, there's nothing mathematically different than four straight melee attacks from Origins. However, the combat has changed somewhat: BioWare has added a layer of spatial awareness to each character's skillset, which the team call "closing attacks."

David Gaider, lead writer for Dragon Age 2, describes the problems they wanted to fix with closing attacks:

The combat was fun, but, it wasn't responsive. Especially, I think what was bothersome was how slow it was, in terms of you doing something and finally executing it. For instance, the Shield Bash. When you SB somebody, you knock them down, and if you then try to attack them while they were down, by the time it sort of lined up the animation and you shuffled into place and finally swang your weapon ...

Q: They were back up?

A: They were back up.

Dual-wielding rogues and warriors will find these types of movement-based skills especially useful, allowing them to close down gaps between enemies and allies. Another useful addition along those same lines is that characters can now turn and attack in the same animation. The result in a more kinetic and spatial experience built on top of Dragon Age's RPG foundations. Complimented by the colorful new art direction, Dragon Age 2's combat offers the visual rewards of an action game but without being mindless or mealy-mouthed.

That's not to say that some other writers at the event didn't try to Dynasty Warriors their way through the first few hours of the game, but they saw the game over screen a lot more often than I did.



The Quartermaster

If you look at Dragon Age 2's combat and still can't contain your apoplexy, take a deep breath and open your character menus. Marvel at how clean and intuitive they are, spend a minute experimenting with your equipment, and watch as the game automatically derives your damage-per-second. With the power of math behind you, I'm sure you'll find the strength to admit that there isn't much hack-and-slashing going on.

Perhaps the truly hardcore like doing their own calculations, but Dragon Age 2 is full of small design changes that make the user-experience a lot smoother and clearer, including (perhaps most importantly) an overhauled skill tree.

Several familiar abilities make the cut from Origins, but the new focus on spatial relationships calls for new skills to take advantage of them. The new skills -- in conjunction with melee options for ranged attackers -- make, for example, a rogue archer build is useful for the first time. There are also warrior skills that, for example, get stronger when your tank is surrounded by enemies. It's obvious that BioWare took time looking at different builds and playing to their strengths.

I also particularly like the new skill trees because they're so much more flexible than the Origins tables. Very few of the skills have prerequisites, and you can choose to spend points improving your useful skills -- make them faster, or cost less -- instead of wasting them on skills that don't fit into your build or play style.

The last major improvement in user experience includes crafting -- instead of collecting individual ingredients, Hawke has access to resource deposits that any craftsman in Kirkwall can use. Natural resources -- elfroot patches, lyrium veins -- can be found in the caves and hills surrounding Kirkwall, which gives players an extra incentive to explore and complete quests that they might've otherwise ignored.



In medias res

What I particularly like about Varric's introduction of the game is the neat way that it locks his perception into the gameplay -- Varric already knows that Hawke is the Champion, and it makes sense that he would present her as a devastating warrior. It's convenient that being a devastating warrior is a nice, safe way to introduce complex ideas to new players without scaring them off. "We give the player a chance to just bust out for a minute," Laidlaw told me. "Here you go; here's two minutes, go nuts. Cone of Cold, Fireball, rain fire down on your foes. That's cool, that's the mage experience in terms of combat."

But the frame narrative -- the hoity-toity name for "a story within a story" -- does more than set up a tutorial. It sets up a certain amount of narrative distance and flexibility that isn't possible in what writer David Gaider calls "walk and talk" RPGs: "You're in every step that the player takes, talking to every person that the player talks to." Gaider continues, "And, I mean, that's cool. A lot of RPGs do that. But ... it also limits the types of stories you can tell."

Gaider described a more novelistic approach to Dragon Age 2, with Varric serving as unreliable narrator, playing fast and loose with chronology. Varric glosses over Hawke's first year in Kirkwall, for example -- it's simply not important to him. These moments create a certain amount of distance between the player and Hawke as player-character: Hawke greets players as old friends even though the player has never seen them; supporting characters develop their own nuanced relationships with Hawke that the player is left to parse.

The result is two fold: relationships feel organic and natural because they aren't saddled by long, overblown exposition; and Kirkwall feels immediately more reactive to Hawke's presence. Instead of a text box or an epilogue detailing the consequences of your choices, the extended timeframe gives Hawke enough time to see them first-hand. When one of your followers loses a loved one, you see it in her body language and her dialogue with Hawke, not forty hours later. Dragon Age 2 manifests the "show, do not tell" adage of storytelling.

I mentioned earlier that I only played about four hours of Dragon Age 2 -- I only experienced one timequake -- but a bit of hard thinking leads me to believe that the benefits of the frame narrative are bountiful indeed. Keeping the narrative locally focused but chronologically expansive allows BioWare to limit the number of active quests. Gone are the doldrums of constantly shuffling between Denerim and Orzammar for this or that fetch quest -- BioWare promises a focused narrative with an equally focused gameplay arc.



Dragon Age 2 is refined, polished, and clean, the result of a unified vision focused on reaping the intangible benefits of tactical planning and deep thinking -- it simply feels good to see your team cinematically executing your vision. The same compulsion I felt to buy Awakenings is at work in Dragon Age 2: namely, I get a deistic kick out of tinkering, experimenting, and setting my creation loose. The Dragon Age franchise -- with its labyrinthine systems and mechanics -- simply enables me to do so better than any game in the past several years.

A very interesting interview here: http://www.rpgamer.c...gonage2int.html - I didn't know that Hawke's past(mother's and father's) would play a major role in the game. I mean, they told us he's but a simple refugee, yet somehow it is not so.

That's part of their revised protagonist-centric storytelling. I'm still a bit skeptic about the true extent of it though.

In Origins, you were a nameless, voiceless hero, but in DA2, you are the silky-toned Hawke, a change that may be jarring to those who favored Origins's old school approach to characterization. Which, as Laidlaw tells it, is not that many players. "People generally hated the silent protagonist," he says, but that wasn't the only reason to adopt a main character who could speak for themselves; Having the hero stand stoically while drama erupted all around them "seemed to be doing a disservice to the storytelling." Recognizing that responding to an impassioned speech from Leliana by choosing a sentence from a menu lacked a certain vitality, the Dragon Age team decided to borrow a page from their colleagues across the hall.

Oh, way to sell out. Damn. They just told their oldest fans to get lost. Now they've really abandoned their roots.

Edited by Archmage Silver, 22 December 2010 - 07:34 AM.

[Vicen]

Its all about the money you know...The masses are shall we say less educated in the ways of fine gaming...It can only get worse before it gets better

Regardless even with all this tom-foolery ill still be picking up a copy...I seem to have a knack for buying bad games or trying them out *cough ff14 worst 50 bucks I spent in my life cough*

Edited by Vicen, 22 December 2010 - 07:57 AM.

[Galsic]

In Origins, you were a nameless, voiceless hero, but in DA2, you are the silky-toned Hawke, a change that may be jarring to those who favored Origins's old school approach to characterization. Which, as Laidlaw tells it, is not that many players. "People generally hated the silent protagonist," he says, but that wasn't the only reason to adopt a main character who could speak for themselves; Having the hero stand stoically while drama erupted all around them "seemed to be doing a disservice to the storytelling." Recognizing that responding to an impassioned speech from Leliana by choosing a sentence from a menu lacked a certain vitality, the Dragon Age team decided to borrow a page from their colleagues across the hall.

Oh, way to sell out. Damn. They just told their oldest fans to get lost. Now they've really abandoned their roots.

The guy said "not that many players." How does that automatically equate to "every single player who supported BioWare since the beginning"? Coulda sworn BW was always a company out to make money, and they did by trying to please as many of their target consumers as possible. Why use features that didn't seem to work as they were before? I don't want that.

Dunno if I've said this before, but I, someone who has been a BioWare fan since BG1, am not a fan of the silent protagonist. It might work in the right story, but I honestly would rather have protagonists like Shepard and, maybe, Hawke. If that makes me a member of the ignorant masses, then me iz giltee as charjed .

Edited by Galsic, 22 December 2010 - 11:43 AM.

[WeeRLegion]

I agree with Galsic here. A silent PC worked best in BG style games where dialogue was primarily text, and the silence just sorta blended in. In DAO, with fully voiced lines and cinematic trickery about, the silence started to stick out a little.
Since DA2 is presumably going to be even more cinematic than DAO, and more alike ME2 in many ways, I doubdt a silent PC could gracefully carry the plot.

And hey, if they deliver on the promise of tuning the dialogue options and voiceover tones by your past dialogue choices (people who often pick sarcastic options will get an sarcastic general tone, and people who tend to pick other options will get a different tone to match their choices, or so I've heard it commented), then I think it'll serve all roleplaying purposes quite fine.

[KIrving]

And hey, if they deliver on the promise of tuning the dialogue options and voiceover tones by your past dialogue choices (people who often pick sarcastic options will get an sarcastic general tone, and people who tend to pick other options will get a different tone to match their choices, or so I've heard it commented), then I think it'll serve all roleplaying purposes quite fine.

I may be in the minority on this but I really don't like the idea of personality matching dialogue or whatever it is they have suggested will happen. I mean how will it work? If I've chosen 2 or 3 sarcastic responses in a row will my next choice be delivered sarcastically even if I'm not meaning it to be. I don't see how it can be anything but clunky and just another way of not knowing what your character is going to say when you push the button of awesomeness.

[WeeRLegion]

AFAIK, each response adds points towards a certain type of voiceover, and everytime your voiceover type is switched the point threshold for change is increased; if you play a dominantly non-sarcastic character, a couple of sarcasms in a row shouldn't result in a VO switch. At least that's the way I understood it.

I guess there's a risk of sometimes getting stuck with an unfitting VO type for a while, particularly early in the game when the thresholds are low, but eh, they might have worked around that.

Edited by WeeRLegion, 22 December 2010 - 01:45 PM.

[Archmage Silver]

Call me a relic, but I don't like voiced protagonists in my RPGs. Having a VA read out the lines for my character creates a rift between me and that character. It just doesn't help me to get immersed in the game, even though that's exactly what the devs are trying to achieve with voiced protagonists. Ultimately I can live with it, but I don't have to like it.

[vilkacis]

The spoken dialogue alone isn't the main offender here.

The dialogue wheel with the "I want a bigger reward" option that actually means "let's fuck right here, right now, right in front of my subordinates" is the big problem.

As opposed to actually picking the dialogue you want your character to say and having npcs reacting to that exact line.

But I guess actuall roleplaying is too difficult for modern gamers because lol xbox haloz press button for awesome sparta general roflskates fuck I'm glad I'm going on vacation tomorrow and will have a good excuse to ignore the corporate bullshit machine.

[berelinde]

I'm on the fence about the whole voiced protagonist thing. On the one hand, a silent protagonist in a cinematic setting does stand out. On the other, what if I can't identify with the voice? If it's too different from the voice I imagine for my PC, it won't go well. I usually do my first play-through of any game with a male PC, a calm, methodical "good guy" who tries to do the right thing. What happens if trying to do the right thing makes him sound like an evangelist?

Then again, I'm not sure paraphrases would have hurt me all that much in parts of DA:O. In one dialogue with Zevran, I chose "You would compare your life with mine?" and I intended it to mean "Your life was full of deprivation and hardship. I had it relatively easy, growing up. Of the two of us, I think you did much better with the hand you were dealt than I ever could have done." But Zevran reacted as if I had just called him a whiner. So in that case, a paraphrase of "You did alright for yourself" would have worked better.

[vilkacis]

Honestly, I'd welcome voice acting if they A, retained the full text choices, and B, allowed a choice of actor, as per the combat grunts in Origins/BG/etc (preferably including an "off" option). Voicing in itself is would not be a bad thing, if it weren't for the fact that they somehow translate that into having to dumb down the dialogue system. That absolutely kills the "R" aspect of "RPG".

Anyway, I'm off.

[WeeRLegion]

I'd agree with that, Vilk, if they weren't already addressing that issue with the tone icons. It sounds easy enough to design, so I'm thinking they won't screw it up. I'm quite sure we'll have a good understanding of what our characters are roughabout going to say and more importantly what they're going to mean with it, and I think that serves the purpose of character connection better than clunky big paragraphs.

As for having alternate VAs available, sure, having multiple options would be great. A shame that it seems to be out of the question.

[Archmage Silver]

As for having alternate VAs available, sure, having multiple options would be great. A shame that it seems to be out of the question.

Yeah. That's also one reason why you can't play as a dwarf or an elf in DA II. It costs way too much to have all the lines read out by more than one male and one female VA. BioWare might not say it out aloud, but it factors in somewhere between the "personalized story" and managing production costs.

On budget cuts... just imagine Mark Meer at a line recording session, thinking he has to sound appropriate for three different races, but still remain neutral enough to please everyone. Ha! Too bad DA II only has one race available and Meer isn't doing any VOs.

[Vicen]

Well if they cut out the female aspect and made you play a Male only then I reckon they could make it so you could be an elf or dwarf Hawke...One more VA then they allready have would not break the bank(Just hire some up and coming person on the cheap for the dwarf since most people would most likely be an elf or a human Hawke)...though that would most likely make more people mad rather then happy heh...

Personally the way they have it is fine with me(If the game is good enough I play a female either 2nd or 3rd time around)...But if they did go the route I explain above I would not be angry there was no female option heh...

Edited by Vicen, 23 December 2010 - 10:41 AM.