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Gaming Dragon Age 2 Preview

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by CardJoe, 5 Oct 2010.

  1. Leane

    Leane What's a Dremel?

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    No elf mage, fixed human protagonist
     
  2. fatty beef

    fatty beef State Side

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    I liked DA:O aside from the fact it was 1/5th the size and glory of BG or BGII. It was a pretty legit RPG that had some quality tactical factors and I could run it in native resolution on my big ass monitor.

    IMO this other direction is absolutely terrible. No continuation of the story just mass effect with swords and magic. I don't get it. Talk about totally biffing a franchise. So much for being a BG successor.
     
  3. hyperion

    hyperion Minimodder

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    Based on the first opinions of the new game and comparing with origins, it sounds to me like they simply got lazy, couldn't be arsed to do as much content as the first game, and released a lesser sequel hoping to ride on the success of first.
     
  4. triprunner

    triprunner What's a Dremel?

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    want a real fantasy cRPG - play the Witcher or Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale again... DAO was a blast but it cant even touch Witcher when it came to the story or the "adult" content. DAO's story was a cliche based on cliche, and although the characters were great it just didnt have that feel like the Witcher where stuff just made sense and the grown up content was really grown up.
     
  5. AstralWanderer

    AstralWanderer What's a Dremel?

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    "The fact that Hawke has a voice has necessitated changes to the dialogue system too. No longer does Dragon Age offer the old adventure game style of dialogue choices where you can see all response options exactly. Instead, Dragon Age 2 uses a dialogue wheel that offers a taste of what your character will say, complete with an indication of their tone."

    This doesn't sound promising - dialogue is what makes (or breaks) a real RPG and not knowing exactly what your character will say (The Witcher had a voiced main protagonist also but managed to let players see the details of their possible replies) will remove the immersion that such games should offer.

    However Bioware are now part of EA - given what EA did to Origin/Ultima, it shouldn't be a surprise to see things progress in a similar fashion with DA.
     
  6. Skiddywinks

    Skiddywinks Minimodder

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    To be fair, I have been disaapointed with Bioware games ever since Mass Effect came out. That's not to say I didn't enjoy they, I thoroughly enjoyed both Mass Effects, and think they are amazing games. The problem I have is that everything is so much simpler. And when I read that there will only be three classes in DA2, all I could do was sigh. It's getting worse.

    What the hell happened to Baldur's Gate, and why is it that nothing from Bioware since has been able to surpass it? KotOR was amazing, second one was also great, but they still weren't quite as gobsmacking as BG.

    I long for the complexity and crazy level of choice that seems to be amiss nowadays. Is it really Bioware catering to the dumb masses?
     
  7. Morrolan

    Morrolan What's a Dremel?

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    A poor review and some uninformed comments here. First the review, errors in fact: its mages not wizards; when could we play a dwarven taxidermist in DAO; the dragon is Flemeth not the Archdemon. There are reasons why the protagonist is new and fixed, you should acknowledge those reasons. Bioware never promised that we would continue with our Warden and it wouldn't make sense anyway. Re the colour palette you should have acknowledged this is a short early section of the game when they are in blight corrupted land, thats the reason for the colour. Also the blood is a personal opinion not a flaw.

    As for the uninformed comments. It won't be a hack and slash, the story will still be strong and that tactical element of combat still retained. This is also a long way from being a medieval ME as well. Oh and the ME story is not stronger than DA's, the dialogue and story for DAO is stronger than either ME or ME2.
     
  8. TMhat

    TMhat frupsie bumsies

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    It was a preview not a review. Whilst they didn't promise we could continue with the warden they left the morrigan story open and the rushed DLC to attempt to wrap it up was just insultingly poor. From what I saw of DA2 at eurogamer it looked very hack and slash...
     
  9. Yemerich

    Yemerich I can has PERSUADETRON?

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    So, your notion of a good story without cliché is Witcher's? A guy trying to save a young princess with an ancient curse IS NOT a cliché? Add seven dwarfs to that and it is "snow white"!

    Although I have to agree that the main plot looks like a cliché, if you have played until sheppard first meet with the reaper in the holo room you will understand that the story is much more than that.

    If you want a cliché free with a fantastic story, grab Planescape: Torment. Then we will talk.
    The only love story in the game is Deionarra's wich was decieved by the main character and convinced to commit suicide to aid him. Now THAT's NOT cliche! This and "nameless one's" main goal to finally die.
    BTW when he achieve his goal, he doesn't "rest in peace". He goes to Baator. What's that? Play the game!

    My point is that almost every game has some type of cliche. The way that the story is told is what make the cliché a good story. And ME 1 has one. ME 2 is shallow as a spit.
     
  10. Leane

    Leane What's a Dremel?

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  11. Leane

    Leane What's a Dremel?

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    Not a poor review at all,maybe Flemeth and the Archdemon needed a more distinctive style,and less recycling of models and environments.
    The dialogue in the Wesley killing scene was this:
    1."It's up to you."
    2."I'll do it."
    3."Put him out of his misery."
    So this does sound incredibly immersing for some and for some it`s Shepard`s :"Deal with it',style.
    The fact that the game is being primarily developed for consoles, leaves no space for speculations that the PC version will be more than a little bit overhauled port.
    The port part was the most underwhelming experience of ME2,together with the ''Entering cell No.1-10,and ACTION'',combat.
     
  12. mastorofpuppetz

    mastorofpuppetz What's a Dremel?

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    Outside of the setting the witcher is the most Cliche less story around. the story was a lot more then "Saving a princess from a curse", thats like saying ME as just saving the galaxy from an ancient race. A lot more goes in in said story, and the witcher blows both ME and DA away for tis consequences, deep story and branching paths' Bioware make crap RPG's and have for years. RPG as a genre is all but dead.
     
  13. mastorofpuppetz

    mastorofpuppetz What's a Dremel?

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    You played DA2? Bioware makes crap RPG's, have for years, up your standards. Your post can be sumed up as" I really know they are dumbing down the game for console kids, but I will try and spin it as something else as I like dumbed down shallow action RPG's.".
     
  14. curme

    curme Minimodder

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    I'm all about the mods and character customization. I'm really disappointed that this time out we won't have either.
     
  15. CardJoe

    CardJoe Freelance Journalist

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    *It's not a review. It's a preview.

    *The Dwarven taxidermy thing is a joke. A pretty obvious one, I thought. You might not find it funny, but it's still clearly a joke.

    *The difference between Wizards and Mages is true, I grant you, but also a mite pedantic really. Dictionary definition for Mage? "Archaic term for a magician, sorcerer or wizard, derived from 'Magus'."

    *I know the Archdemon that appears is Flemeth, just as I know exactly what she tells the player and how she moves the story on - I don't have to drop every spoiler in every article, you know. The whole point of that sequence is that Flemeth is a twist. I know what happens to the Templar who is with them too, but saying so isn't really essential to the preview, is it? Saying the Archdemon appears is technically true and a nice little teaser, in my opinion - and it does away with having to explain who Flemeth is to those who might not have played the first game.

    *I never said we were promised that we would continue as the Warden - only acknowledge it as disappointing for those who expected it. There are many ways it could be made to make sense in the story.

    *Blight or not, the colour pallette looks washed out and brown in every section I've seen. It's the Blight, but that doesn't mean it has to look dull.

    *The blood is a personal opinion, yes, but then so is the whole article. By the same token I can't see how you can dismiss it as wrong on the basis that it's a personal opinion - doing so would only imply that you think your opinion is right - when it's just a personal opinion, as you said to me. (Confused).

    *Everything else you say seems speculative and you're asserting opinion and hope as fact. You have no grounding on which to say that the story will be stronger. All my preview points out is that there are many shared systems and ideas which seem to have been transferred over from ME - an impression based on hands-on time, repeated demonstrations and discussions with the developers. I'd consider that a pretty good basis for informed comments.

    *As for the story being better in DA:O than in ME, well, that's a personal opinion too.
     
  16. sear

    sear What's a Dremel?

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    Anyone who claims that Dragon Age's combat is overly simplistic or boring: play the game on Nightmare and preferably in a non-ideal order (i.e. go for the parts of the game that are balanced to be more difficult first, like Denerim), or skip the easy-to-abuse Primal magic school in favour of something like Entropy. Yeah, I'll see you two weeks from now.

    Frankly, Dragon Age 2 looks pretty poor at this point. Everything BioWare has shown or said about the game so far as reeked of compromise. Combat is more action-oriented and less tactical, the dialogue system has been greatly simplified, potentially damaging player choice and consequence in favour of being "more cinematic" (which if Mass Effect is anything to go by, means that your player character will be forced to be either an idiot or a jerkass), and I have the sneaking suspicion that the story setup is a way for BioWare to reuse the same content and locations but justify it as being "10 years later". The fact that they seem totally unwilling to directly respond to most fan questions that aren't blind praise, or without some sort of qualifier to dress things up, makes me extremely worried that Dragon Age is destined to be a relatively short, middling action-RPG.

    I don't really understand what EA is doing here. The entire point of Dragon Age was that it was a throwback PC RPG, featuring highly tactical combat and lots of options in building your character, as well as choice and consequence within a set narrative. Dragon Age, despite its relatively unimpressive visuals and occasionally dry story, really got the gameplay right. It didn't baby players and, after going through the original Baldur's Gate again, really did feel like a direct continuation or evolution, minus the D&D rule set (which I'm not a huge fan of to begin with). Now, it appears that in the spirit of fulfilling their "one triple-A mainstream hit a year" quota, BioWare are going completely against the original point of Dragon Age for the sake of selling more units, just as they did with Mass Effect 2 (albeit to a lesser degree). The reason the original was so successful, I'd wager, is precisely because it catered to that starving RPG fanbase in a way that games like Mass Effect simply can't. That market never went away, it just went out of the mainstream focus in favour of action games and shooters, and somewhere along the line I think someone missed that point.

    In any case, I think Dragon Age 2 will be a decent game. BioWare, despite sticking to the same formula for most of their games, still are capable of producing some good stuff, and they won't let themselves release garbage (although that's another story for DLC). However, will it be a legitimate sequel that appeals to the same people who loved Dragon Age for its pen and paper mentality? I'm very unsure about that, in which case BioWare can count me out. I enjoyed Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, but I also went into them fully aware that they weren't RPGs (and frankly, anyone who says contrary doesn't know what an RPG is), and I did not play Dragon Age because I wanted another action game where I can mouth off to people and then mow them down without consequence.
     
  17. Leane

    Leane What's a Dremel?

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    People that played the PC version at IstroCon claim that despite the ability to pause,there is no real point in it,because the combat is way to action oriented.Something like that happened to ME2,the easiness of shooting things made even biotics obsolete with their cool-downs.

    The ''more cinematic experience,''looks sometimes like a mask for reduced storytelling and exploring.Similar things happening with movies,where some CGI is there not to underline a good story,but to mask the lack of it .
    Currently it looks like it`s the ''Living on old glory,'' syndrome and that the competition with Blizzard,more so EA`s competition with Activision,has more priority than large fan bases, and the potential to fill the market with character and story driven RPG`s that are really scarce these days in a ocean of action titles.

    It used to be a field that belonged to Bioware,times have changed,trends are there to be followed ,not set.
     
  18. jimmyjj

    jimmyjj Minimodder

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    A lot of people unhappy with the simplification of both games, and the fact that they are not "real" RPG's.

    Levels of complexity do not necessarily a good game make.

    I have fond memories of Eye of the Beholder and my teenage self making maps on graph paper on my lap - but time moves on you know...

    I do not see how you can slam them for their cliched plots either. Looked at one way hardly anything since Tolkein has not been derivitive in some way (and that was based upon many existing sources too).

    The key point is how they stand up as pieces of entertainment. Dragon age Origins was great but flawed, but both Mass Effects were superb fun and very entertaining. Not great RPG's but awesome computer games...
     
  19. Hawke

    Hawke What's a Dremel?

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    From what we can read between the lines so far, DA 2 will be dumbed down to suit the lowest common denominator. It should still be mediocre-OK, but nothing like as epic as DA:O. If people argued before whether DA:O was the 'spiritual successor' to Baldur's Gate ... well now that discussion will seem ridiculous. Try comparing with Diablo instead. DA2 will also probably be shorter (20-30 hrs) and have only one class to play. The dialogue choices will have little icons next to them, so the 'average gamer' (who does Bioware think this idiot is?) doesn't need to exert his little brain with reading - he can just pick a little emoticon to skip the 'boring' dialogue-y bits and get pack to the proper game ("fighting like a Spartan").

    Mass Effect are nice games, but honestly, they are not RPGs. If you like your games ME-style, the market has plenty to offer you (Gears of War, Halo, Modern Warfare etc). Ie all the 'twitch reflex' based stuff. Us hardcore RPG'ers that bought 3.7 million copies of DA:O don't really have any other alternatives. Tut tut, Bioware, was it worth selling out all this goodwill to EA? Could you really not turn a profit with 3.7 million copies, and so were forced to give it the Mass Effect treatment?
     
  20. Fizzban

    Fizzban Man of Many Typos

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