Called it six pages ago. Gonna try the game nevertheless and hope the EA rot hasn't extended as far as the characterizations, and just treat it like a dating sim.

 

Bleh, the demo definitely wreaked of very early material. I would hazard that the demo we got doesn't have any of the changes from November on.

I did, however, enjoy the demo (Xbox 360) and I enjoyed the faster combat with the same strategic value I found in DAO. I seriously played the mage and warrior class near exactly like I did in DAO... only my basic attack was faster and I could kite

 

I hate you and everything you stand for.

 

Like myst said, the strategy was the same but the action was faster. The only thing about strategy I saw that was bad is that I couldn't set the characters to automatically use health potions when low. Could be that I didn't have any potions at the time I tried, but that's still gay.

And on the the 360 the graphics were 100 times better. The voice acting was decent. The constant cut scenes and the linear, not open world were annoying. I assume those were just cause it was the demo though.

So far pretty good. I will see if the actual game stands up to origins.

 

Just finished playing the all of the classes in the demo, and I'm still fairly optimistic about the game.

Let me begin by saying that I played Origins on the 360. Yes, I'm an idiot, but my computer was crap back then. Regardless, it's likely because of this that I was never really a big fan. The controls were clunky, the graphics crap, and the menu system frustrating at times.

I enjoyed the game, but that was more due to Bioware's impressive narrative, rather than the actual mechanics of the game. And, while the depth of tactics was great, playing anything but Mage felt extremely dull.


As for the demo, while I think it's somewhat unfair to critique the entire game on it, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Sure, it wasn't challenging in the slightest, but the actual combat was much more interesting than Origins, and I don't mean that in the Hack and Slash sense. Hopefully, the harder difficulties will prove to be a real challenge and the tactics won't be dumbed down across the board.

From everything I've seen, I'm definitely getting a Name of the Wind vibe coming from the story, though that's mainly due to the story structure and larger than life legend about a real man (Princess Bride also comes to mind.)

In the end, I can say that I'm still definitely going to pick this up on release. Not because I simply need to play all things Dragon Age related, but because the game itself seems worth my money.

 

:facepalm Well, I see the problem already. You do realize that the first few minutes are deliberately exaggerated, right? Varric is telling "The Legend of Hawke" there, not "The History of Hawke." You replay that part later on and it's much more in-line with regular DA combat.

It looks exactly the same to me, which is more than fine. And who the fuck really cares if it doesn't look like Crysis or whatever anyway? Bitching about graphics is incredibly shallow and is reserved for the CallaDooty and Halo fourteen-year-old faggots. Gameplay and story come first. If you can afford to add the rest on without sacrificing that, great.

Given that you don't seem to have actually played the whole thing, I'm not inclined to take your opinion very seriously.

My only notable complaints are with the combat animations and the loading times. The animation idea isn't bad, as the combat in DAO was pretty boring to watch and could have used some pizazz, but these seem a little too jerky. It's not a big issue though. And I'm hoping the loading problems won't be present in the final version.

 

I played the PC version of the demo and I can't say that it convinced me to buy the game. Unless the demo build was extremely outdated and BioWare actually releases patches on time (the fact that it is based on an older version of the game, seems like a reply to every single bug people report on the official board), I foresee that either the game will be extremely buggy, or again community will have to release a ton of fan made patches. *sigh*

Even if I don't mention the engine itself, which is a little dated and it shows (on the other hand I can't unsee nearly rectangular rock formations), but the character design (armour looks like it is made from paper - no separate meshes; unnatural and soulless eyes - do they even freaking move?), enormous weapons (they seem even bigger than models from DA:O - the axe the mook in the 2nd part of the demo had, probably took the cake), empty and sterile environments (the area from the Prologue was pretty much an corridor painted with orange and grey paint with an occasional tree stub, or a ruin of some ancient tower planted at random, Kirkwall never looked like a place in which humans may live - it was so sterile and felt like it was built yesterday) are extremely bad looking and make BioWare seem as extremely lazy.

Special mention should go to Isabella though, because her breasts are so stupidly fake and so in-your-face, that I laughed whenever she appeared on the screen. I also can't forget mooks: putties... Sorry, hurlocks, who not only look extremely ridiculous, but also run like someone cut and pasted them from the Benny Hill.

Combat at times felt better than in DA:O, but seeing the mage twirl the staff in every possible way just to execute basic attacks, or the way rogue jumps all over the screen like a monkey on speed made my head hurt. Especially annoying is the fact that camera is fixed to the character so whenever the rogue teleports to execute a backstab, it swings a lot before stabilizing again. I can't also forget the way femHawke runs - it freaking hurts to watch.

I actually enjoyed the voice acting (especially liked the way Nicholas Boulton and Kate Mulgrew sounded), but on the other hand Jo Wyatt sounds like an entirely different person for distinct conversation options - couldn't get used to that.

Add to that, path finding problems - the amount of time Carver or Hawke got stuck during the prologue was mind-boggling; the stupid companion AI - Bethany can't aim a fireball at moving targets to save her life or companions seemingly change targets at random; the fact that enemies pierced by an arrow or cut by a dagger explode into a mass of limbs and blood that looks like jam; a ridiculously low difficulty level (I completed an entire playthrough with a rogue by using only 'R' button to find the nearest foe and just waited for the cooldown on backstab and evade to expire - I didn't even have to set some fancy tactics for companions; I couldn't even modify them for some reason :facepalm).

Hopefully at least the story in the full game will be decent, because at the moment the prologue was a cliché-fest and side quests presented so far were kind of disappointing (the Isabella and Fenris' recruitment missions).

I'll probably decide to buy the game only after I see some glowing praise from a lot of different sources. At the moment it is completely ridiculous to even compare DA2 to TW2.

 

I'm probably the biggest fanboy here of the original DA:O. I put in well over 300 hours counting multiple plays and the expansion+DLC, and ultimately I can't really say I'm at all confident of DA:2.

I'm sure it'll be good by normal standards, after all even a bad Bioware game is still a good game in general, but DA:O was really something special. A gigantic scripted game (this is the important part) that was not only specifically designed for the PC, but also used a battle system that was very clearly strategic in nature. The scripted part is huge, because any open world game can be huge, it's not hard. Make a few quests, give someone an open world, and they'll be able to waste tons of time in it. Ask the DLP Minecraft addicts.

Scripted long games are much harder. They require so much more detail. You have to script every single event. Write dialogue and get voice actors to read it. Create plots and overall story arcs for those scripted events, and then jam it into one game.

So just in general, DA:2 looks a bit on edge. They've ratcheted up the scripted nature of the game, but removed the CRPG combat, replacing it with an action RPG style, turning it into what is essentially Dragon Effect: 2.

Judging by the demo we've seen, the game graphics have hardly been improved. The fire looks far worse than DA:O, but the models look better. The environments look eh at some points, great at others.

The cut scene and dialogue loading times are unacceptable in their current form, and I'm really hoping Bioware fixes them before release, otherwise I won't be able to finish the game. I know it's a small thing, but that shit really gets on my nerves. It breaks immersion, which is the whole damn reason I play such an interactive RPG.

I'm probably going to be playing as a female in this game, against my normal pattern, because the male sounds so fucking bad. Bioware, I am highly disappoint here.

I'll buy the game, hell I've had it preordered for several months now, but just judging by what we've seen so far, Tehan was right. The craphammer has fallen, and woe be unto those who denied it's commeth.

 

Maybe on consoles... but who cares about consoles?

I'm almost certain I read somewhere on the DAII forum that this was just a demo thing, but I can't find a source.

EDIT: Here's a quote on that subject.

I'll make a more definitive judgment once the full game comes out, but yeah, as it stands, the voice acting is sub-par. Well, except for Flemeth. They're just reusing the same actors, and it shows. I replayed the Human Noble origin last night and the mother there is the same actress as Hawke's mother, which, you know, sort of feels weird. And Male!Hawke is voiced by the guy that voiced that rapist Arl in the Alienage Elf origin.

Couldn't they at least hired a more... I don't know, high-profile actor for Hawke at least? Someone with an awesome British voice.

I do find the "HAWKE IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE HE IS IMPORTANT" thing a little annoying. Even if I am glad that they're not blatantly spoiling important events like they did with ME2 and they actually expect you to play the game to find the answers, I'm suspicious about exactly how important Hawke can be.

Look at your Warden. Defeated a Blight in a little over one year, when the Fourth Blight lasted fifteen (I think), and the First Blight lasted over two-hundred years. Not to mention he/she managed to juggle all the issues with the factions of Ferelden, the issues on their party, their own issues, if applicable, and also maybe did a shit-ton of sidequests to help anyone else they came by. Not to mention all that you do in the expansion DLCs.

I'll be waiting for Hawke to top that with bated breath.

 

My hopes for this game have hit rock bottom and started to burrow.

 

Oh, by the way, they made a companion flash game on facebook called Dragon Age Legends. In closed beta right now. I have two codes if someone want them. I sure as fuck don't.
Edit:

This is nothing. Search "Alistair" on Deviantart and you will learn.

 

Yeah, they made one for the flash game site gamestop owns. It might be the same one. Even for a flash game, it sucked balls. Huge balls. Huge hairy balls.

 

Hey, Dragon Age: Journeys was a pretty good flash game, even if no one has heard of it. I just refuse to out of principal to play anything associated with DA II until Yahtzee reviews it. SO that I can play DA II from his point of view.

 

-.-

Wut?

You want to play an RPG from the perspective of someone who dislikes RPGs?

Edit: As to all that fucking Day one DLC-I'll pirate it all. Day one DLC is just a nice way of saying "Content that should have been in the fucking game you just spent $60 on, but we decided to give away as incentives to retail shops, or sell to you for even more cash."

Nope, not falling for it. I don't feel a single moral qualm with downloading that shit after I just forked over $60 for the goddamn game.

 

Note that she works for Bioware.

 

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Sheryl_Chee

She seems to do good work, so I really don't care about that. The others are more worrisome.

 

She has a philosophy degree. That explains so fucking much about Wynne and Leliana. That said, it means she wrote essentially all my favorite characters.

 

Holy fucking shit, DA2 is becoming a massive disappointment so far. Plus, no toolset and no isometric view on top of everything else? What the hell did they do, spend half the time planning out the 20 DLC items/packages they'll be releasing between now and December?

 

So before you go screaming "OMG WTF,"

READ THIS

It's not so bad as you all think.

Copypaste in case you cant click the link.

And yes, while the day 1 DLC is a bit overwhelming, in the end, you dont need that to play.

 

This made me relax some. No modding= fail.