Dragon Age 2 Quick Look

Post by **tandino** » February 9th, 2011, 20:06

Giant Bomb have done a decent quick look video (11 mins) of Dragon Age 2 in action <a href="http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-roa ... ">vidja</a>. My faith is restored somewhat after seeing that combat has been made quicker and more visceral (to quote the vid) without losing the multi character control from the first. It seems they've edge more towards the mass effect style combat mechanic that I loved dearly.

Thoughts?

Post by **FatherJack** » February 9th, 2011, 21:01

My thoughts are the even the first videos we saw didn't make the game look all twitch/hack-n-slash, they were merely edited to make them look more exciting - no-one wants to sit and watch someone pause the game and scroll through menus. Think back to the original DA:O videos and how awful, clichéd and unrepresentative of the game they were.

You can pause, it has the tactics, the way you do AOE is just the same, they just made the melee a bit more button-mashy.

I was never in any real doubt and completely failed to see why people were getting their knickers in a twist about it.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » February 10th, 2011, 9:05

FatherJack wrote:I was never in any real doubt and completely failed to see why people were getting their knickers in a twist about it.

Bioware is one of those developers that are worthy of the benefit of the doubt. And the combat system from the original wasn't perfect.

Post by **HereComesPete** » February 26th, 2011, 1:32

Just played the demo.

Quite different from the first one. Bad demo for an rpg imo, the inventory is locked but you can still pick stuff up and it rushes you from fight to fight with cut scenes. The combat does have more sense of being a mighty bastard and also a horrible inability to pay attention to the frantic clicking of the health potion quick link.

There's no sense of how quests work, no real chance to look through the various new classes and such without playing over and over.

The wizard class is great.

I think I'll get this, but possibly it's closer to the witcher in play style and as such might suffer against what looks to be a bloody amazing game.

Post by **Dog Pants** » February 26th, 2011, 1:42

94%. PCG reckon it improves on a number of things from DAO, mostly plotty dialoguey stuff.

Post by **FatherJack** » February 26th, 2011, 11:58

Played the demo. The tactics are still in, so you can get your sidekicks to heal you or themselves. It is a bit flashy in its execution, which while great for the mage is bordering on the silly for the thief. Wasn't much beyond battle and cutscenes in the demo, so didn't exactly grab me with the story. Nice to get a preview of yourself with loads of skills to play with. Just a pity I can't be a naked dwarf or a hideously ugly elf this time.

Post by **Dog Pants** » February 26th, 2011, 12:29

Oh, about the ridiculous special moves. The whole game is played as a story being told by one of your NPCs - a yarn-spinning dwarf. So the exploding daggers and teleporting are meant to be representative of him overexaggerating. It's a bit of a crap story mechanic, but at least they've tried to explain it.

Shada · Post by **Shada** » February 26th, 2011, 12:39

So the animations look shoddy and the attacks make no sense because the dwarf loves anime

Post by **Dog Pants** » February 26th, 2011, 12:56

No, he loves your mum.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 10th, 2011, 18:56

http://na.llnet.bioware.cdn.ea.com/u/f/ ... rePack.exe (off http://social.bioware.com/page/da2-patches) perhaps worth grabbing if you've got some free time and some free graphics RAM.

Post by **HereComesPete** » March 11th, 2011, 18:38

Also, if you've just bought it from steam, register it at bioware. Both codes get you more stuff to download.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 11th, 2011, 20:24

Nice to see they haven't removed my favourite bit, though the gurning on the portrait is gone:

DAO:

Neria

Hesababy

Yourmum

DA2:

Kitty

Balders

Yourmum

Thompy · Post by **Thompy** » March 11th, 2011, 21:42

One of the biggest contrasts in critic versus user scores I've seen.

I'm none the wiser. Think I'll wait for the sales.

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » March 11th, 2011, 22:06

WereRabbit wrote:One of the biggest contrasts in critic versus user scores I've seen.

I'm none the wiser. Think I'll wait for the sales.

Interesting you say that, because on it's cropped up on RPS's comments feed, about a chap being banned from his EA account (so, can't play games) due to a mild forum post, that apparently EA/Bioware are trying to blame 4chan for the metacritic user reviews.

Which is odd, considering the number of reviews on metacritic has only just tipped over 1000. If 4chan were involved, it would be quite a bit higher methinks based on the previous times they've trolled review scores (like on Amazon).

Seems quite a few people are disappointed.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 11th, 2011, 23:04

Most of those reviews are from people who have just signed up in order to post that one crappy review and many seem based on the false premise that it's now a button-mashing action game.

I've been playing the original all week and to me the combat system feels exactly the same.

They have streamlined the interface and made the combat more visceral, but to say that means it's console-ised just sounds like parroting someone else's opinion.

I haven't played enough to experience what to me sound like more genuine concerns mentioned a few magazine reviews, of recycling dungeons and limited repercussions from your dialogue choices.

I haven't had any crashes, but it can get laggy with the higher-detail textures installed.

There doesn't seem to be as much interactivity as in the first game, you can mostly only talk to the people that give you quests and shops just pop open an interface. The lore and story of what you did in the first game feels more cursory than integral, which is rather a shame.

It remains to be seen whether there is enough in it to keep me interested for the length of time and number of playthroughs that Origins did.

Post by **HereComesPete** » March 12th, 2011, 2:17

It doesn't look like 'some crappy 2003 game' which I think I read in those reviews, the changes to the engine make it less pretty in detail but allow for larger areas, more enemies and more violent combat.

In the first it often felt like you were hitting things with a small metal spoon for all the apparent damage it did. In this there's malformed body parts flying like a bomb went off at a thalidomide convention.

There's less depth to the whole thing, not every person, cat, dog or tree has a side quest but I would imagine that most people who played the first one didn't even bother trying to do everything.

The inventory/journal/quest log has been stripped down just like mass effect 2 was, it's clearly designed for consoles as well as pc's, but it's not shit because of it. Instead it just takes a few seconds longer to make mass upgrades of armour etc to your dude.

A few of the rpg elements have been stripped back, such as dialogue choice or how you can outfit the different characters, but again I doubt most people actually care that much. They're outraged because other people are outraged.

It's not the original, it's not the trailer they made (thank humanity) and it's not shit.

After a few hours of play a provisional 80%. I still think the witcher 2 will shit all over it, though.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 13th, 2011, 13:27

Hmm, the second cave I've been in does look exactly the same as the first cave, or at least the "rooms" do - the layout differs a bit.

In DAO you didn't particularly notice as a lot of the caves were pretty featureless, but in this they're quite distinctive, so oddly it only stands out that they are reused because they were so memorable in the first place.

I don't know if I'm bothered, on one hand it's a bit wanky to copy-paste every cave, on the other hand at least the caves themselves have a bit of character, instead of just being a brown tunnel.

Post by **Roman Totale** » April 7th, 2011, 19:19

I'm into the Third Act now, and to be honest it's becoming a bit of a slog. The same 10 maps throughout the game - are you shitting me? Even though its play time isn't as long as the first one, I feel like I've playing it for months.

Initially I was looking forward to playing through it again as a different class and different personality, but the thought of going through it all again is like the Mage's Tower times 10.

Post by **FatherJack** » April 7th, 2011, 19:26

I had to play it in short bursts, as the street combat did become a bit of a chore. I've played the Mage's Tower through at least five times (by choice) but I've yet to play through DA2 again. I'll probably give the other classes a go sometime, but I'm in no rush as I just don't think it'll be very different.