Dragon Age 2

[df0]

Playing DA2 demo now. And all I can say is...

Yes! See, now this is what I am looking for. A lovely fps, some fantastic fighting and textures that look good. I'll never touch DA:O again now though as it will make my bain hurt even more after a brief taste of DA2.

[Mr. Gerbik]

I'll never touch DA:O again

or at least say the fuck away from the PS3 version as you should have done to begin with

[df0]

Nobody told me it was that bad

[Wiper]

This is actually something which interests generally about RPGs. Traditionally your character's proficiency at dealing damage is a factor of time, rather than of skill. The person who spends longer grinding, or completes more of the side-quests will end up with the better stats and the better gear. Tactical play and fast reflexes don't count for a whole lot in a turn-based system. In an Action RPG, this ageing approach to combat feels especially out of place. It's partly why ME2 saw the statistics-driven accuracy and damage mechanics of its predecessor removed in favour of more skill-based approach, and was a much better game as a result.

Making kinetic combat feel weighty and satisfying, while retaining the familiar sense of growth and progression of an RPG is a difficult problem to tackle. It seems that the developers for DA2 have addressed it by speeding everything up, making attacks more impressive visually, and adding extra gore, but they haven't really broached the crux of the issue ("Why is every enemy I successfully strike with my giant bastard sword not cloven in twain?").

In every other genre games are typically either very realistic or arcadey, for lack of a better term. Compare Modern Warfare to Bulletstorm for example. I'm not saying it has to be one or the other, but I don't know of a lot of RPGs that forgo the fantasy and don't take advantage of our suspension of disbelief. Mount & Blade is the only notable example I can think of.

I think what I'm trying to say is, that it appears DA2 is an attempt to adapt the RPG, but at its core it's still a very traditional game. For me, that works great, but I can completely understand if for others it doesn't work so well.

The thing is, though that it felt weightier in DA:O by having the two-handed weapons always deal heavy damage, but with very slow attacks and a high risk of missing. Which, well, made a little more sense. But yeah, I can see why they wanted a faster, more visceral experience, which put them in a bit of a quandary when it came to that weapon.

Still, the weapon looks nice and dynamic in stills (and I'm very glad Bioware kept the built-in screenshot option since DA:O, something all PC games should have), at least!

Hawke, about to deal a lot less damage than you'd think. Again.

[df0]

Ow man, I cant wait for DA2 now! That demo is all sorts of amazing

[Sergeant Squid]

Spoilage

Nice one for the spoilers, bumhead.

[Cosmic_Guru]

It's as though Bioware have inverted the difficulty of each class since DA:O (which was, of course, a cakewalk as a mage, standard difficulty as a warrior and a challenge as a rogue).

I can't say I agree with this statement. On the reasonable assumption that your party will include a rogue, and on the further assumption that you are not needing to micro manage every move of every team member, it seems to me to be preferable to have a rogue as the PC (and not an NPC) simply because of the ability to both reconnoitre in advance of the main party and to be very selective in targeting with backstab or longbow once the action kicks off.

I'm not saying that this class does the maximum damage - clearly that is mage or arcane warrior but in terms of survivability I would say the rogue is at least the equal of the other classes with the benefits of the class - invisiblity, back stabbing, use of poison, traps & bombs etc. I also have to say I find the role enjoyable compared to the plain dullness of warriors of which there are no lack in the game and the same old spell casting routines of a mage.

This from someone who has completed the game on normal difficulty as all three at different times.

Onto the demo of DA2 tonight!

[Teeohbee]

If it's any consolation, that didn't happen on my play-through of the demo.

My brother died instead. How'd that happen?

[Wiper]

Nice one for the spoilers, bumhead.

It seems like a spoiler, but trust me, it isn't. That scene is handled with all the sensitivity and emotional impact of a sponge.

And Teeohbee - it's to do with your class, as the game, er, tries to avoid doubling up...

[Wiper]

I can't say I agree with this statement. On the reasonable assumption that your party will include a rogue, and on the further assumption that you are not needing to micro manage every move of every team member, it seems to me to be preferable to have a rogue as the PC (and not an NPC) simply because of the ability to both reconnoitre in advance of the main party and to be very selective in targeting with backstab or longbow once the action kicks off.

I'm not saying that this class does the maximum damage - clearly that is mage or arcane warrior but in terms of survivability I would say the rogue is at least the equal of the other classes with the benefits of the class - invisiblity, back stabbing, use of poison, traps & bombs etc. I also have to say I find the role enjoyable compared to the plain dullness of warriors of which there are no lack in the game and the same old spell casting routines of a mage.

This from someone who has completed the game on normal difficulty as all three at different times.

Onto the demo of DA2 tonight!

I don't recall saying it was less enjoyable because it was a challenge - quite the opposite! Hence my being more interested in playing a mage in DA2, as that seems to be the tougher one to play this time.

But anyway, based on my having played through the game on Hard difficulty as a warrior (dual-weapon spec), and then started Normal as a mage (before getting bored at the cakewalk after 16 hours or so and stopping) and finally Normal as a rogue (archer) (I'm about two-thirds through now, about to complete Orzammar, with the Dalish to go), and I can safely say that the rogue's way has been considerably harder than the warrior, even on a lower difficulty. And is hilariously difficult compared to what the mage faces.

[Cosmic_Guru]

This is actually something which interests generally about RPGs. Traditionally your character's proficiency at dealing damage is a factor of time, rather than of skill. The person who spends longer grinding, or completes more of the side-quests will end up with the better stats and the better gear. Tactical play and fast reflexes don't count for a whole lot in a turn-based system. In an Action RPG, this ageing approach to combat feels especially out of place. It's partly why ME2 saw the statistics-driven accuracy and damage mechanics of its predecessor removed in favour of more skill-based approach, and was a much better game as a result.

Making kinetic combat feel weighty and satisfying, while retaining the familiar sense of growth and progression of an RPG is a difficult problem to tackle. It seems that the developers for DA2 have addressed it by speeding everything up, making attacks more impressive visually, and adding extra gore, but they haven't really broached the crux of the issue ("Why is every enemy I successfully strike with my giant bastard sword not cloven in twain?").

I agree this is an interesting issue, particularly the interplay between player skill and character level. I remember reading that Bethesda realised they had to move away from the traditional dice rolls accompanying each swing of the sword as they planned combat in Oblivion because gamers couldn't understand why their characters were swinging their swords and doing absolutely no damage, so they changed it so that the same total damage was done over a particular time frame but each swing would cause some damage. I am slightly puzzled by the criticism of melee combat in TWII which seems meaty enough to me and sufficiently differentiates between a fast long reaching polearm and a shorter blunt instrument, without going to the extremes of a game like Fable 1 where a character with insufficient strength would literally drag a big axe along the ground without being able to swing it at all. Then there is Risen where success in combat to me seems almost entirely driven by player skill and levels and gear are relatively unimportant - the best comparison I can make is Ninja Gaiden where the default position is clutching the trigger for block.

[revlob]

If it's any consolation, that didn't happen on my play-through of the demo.

My brother died instead. How'd that happen?

Not sure if this has already been answered, but I think it has to do with the class you pick.

Your sister is a mage, and your brother is a warrior, so if you pick mage then you lose the sister like I did. Otherwise you'd have two mages from the start, which would probably make the game way too easy, unless BioWare really have addressed the balance

[Rudi von Starnberg]

If it's any consolation, that didn't happen on my play-through of the demo.

My brother died instead. How'd that happen?

It's dependent on what class you play as.

Bioware have said that both 'characters' will have exactly the same script post-prologue, so it's a really cheap move.

I also have some significant problems with the plot contrivances and shit worldbuilding of the demo. Mild spoilers to follow, I guess.

So the idea is that Hawke's family is fleeing the Darkspawn. It's not said which direction they're going in, but presumably it's a vaguely northerly direction at first since that's away from the Blight. Fair enough. This is leaving aside any issues of the terrible environment, of course, and how you may as well not be fleeing Lothering since you don't see anything of it. Then you meet Doomed Templar and Shit Rectangle Face Avelline, and you're informed that the Darkspawn have cut off the way north and that you have to go south because it's the only chance you have, even though going south means heading into the teeth of the Blight. Okay, again, fair enough. Except that there's no trace of an alternate path that you could have taken anyway, as you're just following the linear corridor of brown. But let's assume you're going south at this point. Hawke's family, of course, say they want to get to Kirkwall. Which doesn't really make sense, then you're told it's because they have family and an estate there. Okay fair enough. But Kirkwall is MILES away, across a sea. Why not say they're heading to Denerim first then taking ship, or something? That would make some fucking sense. Kirkwall - as an end point - is sort of like meeting someone on foot outside Nottingham and them telling you that they're going to Lille in France when you ask. It's unnatural, especially because the distance to Kirkwall means that surely escape to a nearby, safe town would be the priority instead? This is just bad writing and could have been solved with half a sentence of extra stuff. Anyway.

Not thirty seconds later you meet the ogre and then Flemeth turns up in dragon form and goes all WHY ARE YOU IN MY WILDS.

hold the fucking phone

You literally just turned south. If there's any logic to things at all, Hawke's family were heading north to start with, and so in north-south terms of their starting point (Lothering) they've still got some way to go before they get at all south of the village. But even once south of the village, the Korcari Wilds - where Flemeth lives - are miles to the south. You wouldn't have reached them for a day or two at least, going by how Dragon Age handled the sense of distance. And then that's it. You're apparently in the Wilds, having been walking (in less than one consistent direction) for about 5 minutes, tops. Absolutely terrible non-attempt at imparting a sense of place and distance.

That might all seem nitpicky but it really nagged at me when I was playing it and thinking about it afterwards it made so little sense. With a bit more effort, the writers could have made it work. And fucking who knows, maybe they cut down the prologue hugely for the demo and it's actually going to be properly set up in the full game. But I doubt it, and it saddens me. Not much care has gone into making the game's (pretty basic) storyline work, or making it convincing.

I quite liked the framing bits with Varric though. It's no Leland and Thorton but it works well enough.

[Ferine]

I don't recall saying it was less enjoyable because it was a challenge - quite the opposite! Hence my being more interested in playing a mage in DA2, as that seems to be the tougher one to play this time.

I feel the exaggerated version of the opening shows you how ultimately devastating Mages are, though. Perhaps they are slightly less hardy in the beginning, but using magic you can obliterate all the darkspawn and the ogre in a matter of seconds, unlike the relative battle of attrition that is hacking away at them.

That said I'm not sure how many of those high level spells you'll be able to realistically pump out given that you have an indefinite supply of mana during the opening.

[Wiper]

And considering the cooldown on the spells (whereas the rogue seems to be able to evade and backstab near-constantly). But yeah, a demo on an unusually easy 'normal' mode is hardly the best way to judge these things, I guess.

Oh, did anyone else find the new way the stats work interesting? The way that Strength improves warriors' generic attack and damage values, whereas Dexterity has that effect on Rogues and Magic on mages. Interesting way of doing things, I thought.

Though I was a bit bemused by the logic leading to cunning improving defence, whereas dex is the critical-chance trait, which is the inverse of every previous system I'm aware of. I suppose they needed it to make cunning ever worth taking (presuming here that it has less of an impact on the outside game than it did in DA:O), but if that was the case they might as well have just made it the named stat for improving rogues' attack and damage values while improving critical chance (due to the 'cunning' inherent in spotting weakpoints in armour), and dex the defence and critical damage stat. I mean, is it really easier to out-think a swordblow than it is to just dodge the sodding thing thanks to your reflexes?

[Mr. Gerbik]

(and I'm very glad Bioware kept the built-in screenshot option since DA:O, something all PC games should have)

You do know that you can take screenshots of whatever game you fancy in Steam which then get uploaded to your Steamcloud automatically, right?

[Matt Defis]

What? how do you do this?

[CandyBob]

Strange plot and geographical issues aside (I'm assuming this is because its the demo) I enjoyed it.

As someone who wasn't so keen on the changes to ME2, I did fear the worst and was dreading playing the game.

The good bits:

The skill trees are really really good. Much better than the old system and a big plus.

On the PC with DirectX 11 and everything max it looked pretty nice. It's not going to win any awards, the textures on the character models are very flat for example. They do the job though. The animation's are horrendous however. Maybe it's a demo thing.

The combat is faster than the first game but this does not effect the strategic nature of the gameplay. It flows really well and at times, playing as the rogue, it was like watching a dance. You could create an almost endless, beautiful combo. The pause function is still as useful as the first game though, even more so considering the speed. There was a marked difference between playing the rogue and the mage. As expected the mage conducted the flow of the battle.

The pirate roguey woman with the big boobs.

Negs:

Terrible editing during the acting bits. I'm putting this down to the demo.

Horrible loading interruptions. I'm putting this down to the demo.

Too much combat. I'm putting this down to the demo.

No zoomed out tactical view that I could find. Why oh why take this out. Absolute madness. If I wanted to play the console version I'd buy that.

Overall though really looking forward to it.

[Mr. Gerbik]

What? how do you do this?

Link

I've been using it for a while now and it works great. Best thing is that it simply works with ALL my Steam games and demos and that all those screenshots are stored in the Steamcloud instead of taking up space on my PC somewhere. it just goes to show that Steam really is the best thing ever

[Teeohbee]

It's dependent on what class you play as.

Bioware have said that both 'characters' will have exactly the same script post-prologue, so it's a really cheap move.

I also have some significant problems with the plot contrivances and shit worldbuilding of the demo. Mild spoilers to follow, I guess.

So the idea is that Hawke's family is fleeing the Darkspawn. It's not said which direction they're going in, but presumably it's a vaguely northerly direction at first since that's away from the Blight. Fair enough. This is leaving aside any issues of the terrible environment, of course, and how you may as well not be fleeing Lothering since you don't see anything of it. Then you meet Doomed Templar and Shit Rectangle Face Avelline, and you're informed that the Darkspawn have cut off the way north and that you have to go south because it's the only chance you have, even though going south means heading into the teeth of the Blight. Okay, again, fair enough. Except that there's no trace of an alternate path that you could have taken anyway, as you're just following the linear corridor of brown. But let's assume you're going south at this point. Hawke's family, of course, say they want to get to Kirkwall. Which doesn't really make sense, then you're told it's because they have family and an estate there. Okay fair enough. But Kirkwall is MILES away, across a sea. Why not say they're heading to Denerim first then taking ship, or something? That would make some fucking sense. Kirkwall - as an end point - is sort of like meeting someone on foot outside Nottingham and them telling you that they're going to Lille in France when you ask. It's unnatural, especially because the distance to Kirkwall means that surely escape to a nearby, safe town would be the priority instead? This is just bad writing and could have been solved with half a sentence of extra stuff. Anyway.

Not thirty seconds later you meet the ogre and then Flemeth turns up in dragon form and goes all WHY ARE YOU IN MY WILDS.

hold the fucking phone

You literally just turned south. If there's any logic to things at all, Hawke's family were heading north to start with, and so in north-south terms of their starting point (Lothering) they've still got some way to go before they get at all south of the village. But even once south of the village, the Korcari Wilds - where Flemeth lives - are miles to the south. You wouldn't have reached them for a day or two at least, going by how Dragon Age handled the sense of distance. And then that's it. You're apparently in the Wilds, having been walking (in less than one consistent direction) for about 5 minutes, tops. Absolutely terrible non-attempt at imparting a sense of place and distance.

That might all seem nitpicky but it really nagged at me when I was playing it and thinking about it afterwards it made so little sense. With a bit more effort, the writers could have made it work. And fucking who knows, maybe they cut down the prologue hugely for the demo and it's actually going to be properly set up in the full game. But I doubt it, and it saddens me. Not much care has gone into making the game's (pretty basic) storyline work, or making it convincing.

I quite liked the framing bits with Varric though. It's no Leland and Thorton but it works well enough.

Isn't this the key though?

Bioware can just sweep any inaccuracies like this under the rug by claiming that the narrator is not trustworthy. Varric may not have known the geography of the area, he wasn't even there at the time, so in his head, and to speed up the story, they only had to walk 2 minutes to get to the wilds, despite it looking exactly the same as Poo Brown Ridge as I like to call it.

Anyway, I fundamentally agree with you, the writing so far shown has been pretty awful. It's just a shame that the "origins" of this story cannot match up to those of the best from DA:Origins (Dwarf commoner being my favourite, although City elf was a forum favourite)

[waddie]

But Kirkwall is MILES away, across a sea. Why not say they're heading to Denerim first then taking ship, or something? That would make some fucking sense. Kirkwall - as an end point - is sort of like meeting someone on foot outside Nottingham and them telling you that they're going to Lille in France when you ask. It's unnatural, especially because the distance to Kirkwall means that surely escape to a nearby, safe town would be the priority instead?

Hawke's mother suggests Kirkwall, his sister immediately says in that case they need to go "to Gwaren and take ship", which would be south-east of their location if they were north of Lothering (it's on the far side of the Brecilian Forest).

That could conceivably take them through the Wilds. Not in five minutes, but this is the dwarf's recollection of a story he wasn't present for. Maybe he glossed over the dull travelling bits.

[waddie]

But anyway, based on my having played through the game on Hard difficulty as a warrior (dual-weapon spec), and then started Normal as a mage (before getting bored at the cakewalk after 16 hours or so and stopping) and finally Normal as a rogue (archer) (I'm about two-thirds through now, about to complete Orzammar, with the Dalish to go), and I can safely say that the rogue's way has been considerably harder than the warrior, even on a lower difficulty. And is hilariously difficult compared to what the mage faces.

Never played an Archer, but Dual-Weapon Rogues play more or less like Warriors, except with more interesting skills and squishier if they ever get caught.

[Matt Defis]

Warrior archers have the highest single target DPS in Awakening, nothing not even a mage can come even close to matching them, they can pretty much kill any boss including the last boss in seconds.

Waddie is bang on about Gwaren as well, it's a fishing port and the first place Maric took back from the Orlesians during the occupation of Ferelden.

[SeanR]

2GB... downloading now.

never tried the first (two?) games, but hey, I liked ME, and this is the same, right?

[moosegrinder]

No. No it isn't.

[Loki]

Having a little play with Steam Cloud which Gerbik suggested. Pretty awesome!

[SeanR]

No. No it isn't.

Oh.

[Wiper]

You do know that you can take screenshots of whatever game you fancy in Steam which then get uploaded to your Steamcloud automatically, right?

What with Steam's tendency to kick me in the 'nads when I least expect it, I think I'll pass on anything that involves me signing up to any of its beta forms, thanks

[Mr. Gerbik]

What with Steam's tendency to kick me in the 'nads when I least expect it, I think I'll pass on anything that involves me signing up to any of its beta forms, thanks

You're in luck! As of just a few moments ago this feature is out of beta and now officially part of Steam - so you now have this optional feature whether you like it or not

[Wiper]

Fucking Gabe really is e-stalking me!

Presumably he's analysed my rig, and has designed the update so that the moment I press F12...

*BOOM!*

No more PC