Dragon Age 2

[Freya]

Comes out in a few weeks! The demo just went live. I already played and beat it and got the special sword for the actual game.

I was throughly impressed. It was more of a button pushing Action RPG. But when they ported Da:O over to the 360 originally, it sucked. It wasn't very responsive and you couldn't even use strategy if you wanted. DA2, at least on the 360, was much more fun combat wise than DA:O. Or so I thought. I can't say how the PC is, but I really like DA2 so far.

Much like ME2 you get a dialogue wheel. It also gives you pictures to represent stuff. I asked a certain dragon lady if she could teach me how to be a dragon cause i'm cocky like that. They also give dynamic angles to things rather than the just looking at the character during interactions from the first game.

If you have pre-ordered or are going to buy when it comes out, go get you some promotional items! Penny arcade has one and on their(DA2) site is another. If you play the demo you get ANOTHER. If you have Dead Space 2 you get a set, if you preorder you get some stuff. STUFF!

Are you guys excited?

[nirojan]

If you have pre-ordered or are going to buy when it comes out, go get you some promotional items! Penny arcade has one and on their(DA2) site is another. If you play the demo you get ANOTHER. If you have Dead Space 2 you get a set, if you preorder you get some stuff. STUFF!

Are you guys excited?

Hellz YEAH! got the bioware signature edition pre-ordered. Will download demo tonight and already bought DS2! Umm did you get DS2 for 360? If so was the Sir Issac armour code included with the game? I bought it on PS3, but it didn't come packaged with the game.

[Freya]

There should be an insert code in your DS2 case for 360. For the PS3 you need to log in to your EA account in-game (DS2). Then go to the site and it'll be on your promotion items page, same with the other extras. When you get DA2 you just log on while playing and tada! You'll have it.

[Jessweeee♪]

I really like how they're handling the protagonist the same way they do with Mass Effect. I don't care if it's not original anymore, it's a great system. Normally when you have a protagonist that can be whoever you want you end up with a silent hero that usually has no personality. No longer do I have to give up character for customization!

[Ouch!]

I know there are some people who get really disappointed about the shift towards a Shepard-esque hero and away from pure customization that was allowed in the first game. Honestly, though, I don't play a video game to imagine certain aspects of character anymore. If I want the experience of imagination and filling in all that, I'd play a table-top campaign of Dungeons and Dragons. Hawke, I think, is a step in the right direction toward better storytelling and better expression of character.

I'll be playing the demo tonight when I get out of my study group for an exam; I am excited.

[Flying Arrow]

I had an okay time with DA:O last summer. Thing is - and I might be the only one on this whole planet - I generally just don't like Bioware games very much. Every single one I have ever played has irked me in some way. I may try the DA2 demo whenever it comes out on PSN - that is, when I'm done with the MLB 11 demo and XENOGEARS.

[kotora]

Wasn't too impressed with the first one but I'll give the demo a try. We'll see if it's just another fantasy themed mod of Mass Effect/

[Ouch!]

You've referred to Dragon Age: Origins as a fantasy-themed mod of Mass Effect multiple times now, and it's always bothered me. Not in the sense that I'm deeply troubled by it, but I guess I just don't see it. Sure, it follows the same formula that all the Bioware games typically do, but that doesn't make it a fantasy mod for a science fiction game, it just makes it a high fantasy Bioware game.

Beyond that, the original was, if anything, in many ways a major step backwards (or perhaps just away from, depending on how you feel about it) from Mass Effect. The dialogue trees were the exact same out of Knights of the Old Republic. If anything, DA2 will be more like Mass Effect by adopting the dialogue wheel (an improvement I feel, but I'm unsure if you'll agree). The game play was also extremely different: full control over party members, detailed stat, skill, and talent allotment. The mechanics scream Dungeons and Dragons, not Mass Effect.

Further than that, the exclusion of any sort of morality meter was another further step away from Mass Effect. Dragon Age: Origins was interesting in that it liberated itself from the dichotomy that other Bioware games have offered where everything you do clearly fell into a defined black and white morality. You're either a douche or you're a saint with a very unsatisfying middle ground. Dragon Age: Origins explored various moral shades of grey that were distinctly lacking in Mass Effect.

That's not to say that the game was by any means perfect. Far from it. The overall plot was pretty much stock high fantasy and it was driven by a relatively uninteresting main protagonist. Further, the gameplay mechanics were so clearly designed as a point-and-click PC user interface that at times the management of skills and targeting on the console versions can become damn near unbearable. The game has some serious faults, and I can understand criticizing it for those, but I really just don't get the "fantasy mod of Mass Effect" criticism.

I'm probably giving you too much credit and you're just trollin', though.

[McLovin']

Daayum March is turning out to be an amazing month for games and movies!

[Ouch!]

Finished the demo. The conversation wheel with the images indicating tone of the dialogue is definitely an improvement. I'm also impressed with the new attribute distribution screen and how it shows the exact correlation of the core stats and the various other stats that they affect in turn. The skill trees are also an improvement over their Dragon Age: Origins counterparts.

The battle system is certainly more frantic than the previous title. Not entirely sure how I feel about it just yet. It definitely flows much more on consoles than it did before, which is an improvement if you're playing that version, I suppose. My only concern is that it feels that the demand for tactics has all but disappeared. Then again, I imagine that might be different on higher difficulty settings; you could pretty much go in guns blazin' in Dragon Age: Origins on most difficulties and for most encounters anyway.

New gameplay footage. Spoilers in that video, I suppose. It's some gameplay from the mission which results in the acquisition of the character Fenris. Who else recognizes the voice actor?

[Psychotic]

Can you play as a Dwarf? I heard you can't.

If you can't, this game will be nothing compared to the original. Nothing. I will refuse to buy it.

Honestly I don't think anything in video games will ever come close to the gay sex scene between Zevran and my stout hairy dwarf.

[Freya]

Unfortunately you can't. Just the human. I hear out of the 4 main LI, they all can be romanced by either gender though. They haven't officially said that but it's what has been implied.

[Vyk]

They've yet to explain why they decided to gimp the character creation in this game as opposed to the first one. Its not like the voice would need to be different. You can get a neutral voice that might seem light for a dwarf and harsh for an elf, but it wouldn't break believability. So I refuse to believe this is because the protagonist is voiced in this game. Just like Shepard could have easily been any other species, except maybe Krogan or something more exotic. But in that game the plot was very human-centric so it was a choice they made regarding the story at least

[Shadowdust]

Played through the first half of the demo. I had a lot of fun playing through it and look forward to doing a full run of the demo sometime this weekend to unlock the additional items. Also, I just checked the DA 2 demo page and it's been downloaded more than 1.2 million times. So Bioware reached their goal.

[Ouch!]

Vyk, what leads you to believe that the decision to have Hawke as a human only is not a story based decision? The story is the rise of the Champion of Kirkwall who escaped from Lothering (which is important insofar as the resulting encounter with Flemeth). I don't know about you, but I don't remember many races other than humans hanging around Lothering (there was the elf family and Sten, but that's about it).

Beyond that, voices do matter. Humans are intentionally given Received Pronunciation English accents (most are hardly perfect, but that was Bioware's stated intent) while City Elves and Dwarves (although they originally wanted to use German) are intentionally given a Midwest American accent and the Dalish are Welsh. Beyond that, merely giving a character a voice enforces the necessity for an identity. Quite frankly, if my dwarf character spoke the same way as my elf character, it'd drive me insane, and it's not fiscally sound for Bioware to record every line in the game six times.

For reference, for Antivans they hire Spanish voice actors and French for Orlesians. As I'm sure everyone already figured out.