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Dragon Age 2 demo out

Raven's Photo Raven 10 Mar 2011

I was not an RPG fan till I played DAO. DAO was the first RPG game I played till the end. I don't knw what ticked about DAO, but its one of the best games I've played.

EA is playing the same trick as with CnC. They will ruin the franchise.
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TheDR's Photo TheDR 10 Mar 2011

View PostRaven, on 10 Mar 2011, 4:21, said:

I was not an RPG fan till I played DAO. DAO was the first RPG game I played till the end. I don't knw what ticked about DAO, but its one of the best games I've played.

EA is playing the same trick as with CnC. They will ruin the franchise.

Tbh, I think blaming it on EA is not fair to EA. As bad as EA has been in the past it seems like Bioware should take the blame. From what I have heard so far it seems more like Dragon Effect, I really doubt it was EA's decision to do that.
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SquigPie's Photo SquigPie 10 Mar 2011

Well, while EA still has their bad sides (like how they wouldn't let Brutal Legend be advertised as an RTS/Action hybrid due to "RTS being a bad worrd for consoles"). They can't be blamed for every bad thing that happens. Once in a while it's just the devs being idiots.

Besides, they're still much better than Activision.
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Ion Cannon!'s Photo Ion Cannon! 10 Mar 2011

View PostSquigPie, on 10 Mar 2011, 11:39, said:

Well, while EA still has their bad sides (like how they wouldn't let Brutal Legend be advertised as an RTS/Action hybrid due to "RTS being a bad worrd for consoles"). They can't be blamed for every bad thing that happens. Once in a while it's just the devs being idiots.

Besides, they're still much better than Activision.


Bioware is as much to blame as EA imo, during all the coverage bioware said again and again it wasn't mass effect with swords, when it blatantly is. Thats the reason for the backlash, if Bioware had straight up said - "The direction of this game is very different to its original, it will not appeal to the hardcore RPG crowd nearly as much and will cater more towards an action orientated gameplay. " then most of those dissapointed wouldn't have bought the game in the first place. Sure some would still bitch, but you can never please everyone anyway. I don't much like one of my favorite franchises being dumbed down, but if they had at least admitted it instead of stringing people along the backlash would be much less severe.
Edited by Ion Cannon!, 10 March 2011 - 18:53.
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Raven's Photo Raven 11 Mar 2011

I think they may have been forced to take such a decision since EA must have given them a tight schedule. I don't think they had more than an year to develop DA2 fulltime after finishing the DLCs. Its not at all enough to come up with a polished RPG in the scale of DAO. So they had to do something like this. Just like how CnC was scrapped together with tighter schedules.
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Libains's Photo Libains 12 Mar 2011

Something I'm beginning to notice in reading reviews is that there seem to be two different kinds of reviews: Those that play as Rogue, and those that do not.

Seems like the people that play Rogue and have a lot of backstabbing goodness are very very much enjoying the gameplay, which in turn appears to be the only detractor for the other two classes in reviews. The story is apparently polished, the enviroments decent enough (although apparently the city is somewhat meh), and it's just the jilted gameplay mechanic built into the two other classes that seems to fuck everything up. Going to try the demo as Rogue, just to see what it's really like.
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Raven's Photo Raven 12 Mar 2011

I'm playing as rouge, and the backstabbing goodness is there. Still I enjoyed using Zevran in DAO much better, having said that, I have not fullly developed by rogue yet. Only level 6. The backstabbing animation is cool though :D. The environments so far are beautiful. What the reviewers are saying is that it gets repetitive. Since I am still at the beginning its not repetitive for me. Cam angles sucks a lot. You can't sometimes see ahead. I really hope that a mod would fix this to the old DAO cam angles.
Edited by Raven, 12 March 2011 - 02:55.
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CJ's Photo CJ 12 Mar 2011

Alrigthy so, I found a save generator and therefore was able to set up the same background I had achieved before, thus enabling me from playing DA2 normally.
Well, I must agree with most people here, the gameplay has obviously been dumbed down (the fact that the easiest difficulty setting is labeled casual speaks for itself). The graphics are not that great (I'm using the HD texture fix btw), the environment is way too empty, especially during cutscenes.
Some places are simple copy-paste of other zones, especially the caverns I visited. In fact you'll see lots of sealed doors in those caverns, and the ones that are open vary from cavern to cavern, basically they just made one big cavern and are using the sealed doors to create the illusion of having done a great job of it.
The rogue attacks animations are quite enjoyable, as long as you can get the frickin camera to point in the direction you want it to, I found myself pausing the game every 5 seconds during battles to adjust it.
The spell/competence system has also been overhauled, it's sorting is better, but some great abilities got removed...
You can't bloody equip any armor on your companions, they're doomed to wear the same one, anything you might find you'll just end up selling cause it's not made for your class. The only items you'll keep are accessories and some weapons (which your party members can use)
The only thing that keeps me going is the story, but I've only reached level 10 and I feel that the story will soon end, therefore I started working on the side quests, but abandoned that due to their stupidity, it's always the same : stumble upon a loot which you cannot sell even though it looks like a regular crappy loot, take it to a random person which will turn out to be the owner of the loot (I mean, it's not even like you were assigned this task by the owner, you just find the item and your character will magically know who's the owner...)

EDIT : Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that you can't talk with most NPCs, you can't even click on them to make them say random lines, that and also the characters in your party interfere a lot less during conversations, most of the time you've got an option to force them to talk, otherwise they'll just stay silent.

All in all, good work on screwing up such a great game BioWare. In fact this quote of lead designer Mike Laidlaw already warned people of the soon-to-be failure that this game was going to be :

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[Mike Laidlaw]"For budgetary reasons, we focused our work on a 3rd person view, that asks for very detailed and nice textures so that the player can admire the game with a close-up view. With an aerial view [isometric] we should cover much more ground and so create other textures. Now, the game mainly sold on console, so we're going the way of the audience"

Also, no toolset or SDK will be released (which is quite normal if they ditched PC gamers), so there won't easily be a way to create a mod to repair the camera...
Edited by CJ, 12 March 2011 - 07:36.
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Raven's Photo Raven 13 Mar 2011

They have even removed the fatigue system and dumbed down the Injury system. Injuries does not say where you are hurt and does not have body part specific penalties. WTH were they thinking???? I am totally enraged by this. I hope to god that ME3 will not suffer a same fate like this.
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BeefJeRKy's Photo BeefJeRKy 13 Mar 2011

This time, Dragon Age 2 was ported from the console to the PC. Last time, the opposite was true. DA II is a massive upgrade to the console players of the first (DA:O was horrid on the PS3 and even worse on the 360). However, those who liked the PC game, will be disappointed. The combat was streamlined but then the tactical element is lost. The story is a little more lacking and according to friends sometimes feels purposeless. Lots of repetition as well. This didn't turn out as promising as I had hoped. Personally, I feel it was rushed. BioWare should have been able to actually develop 2 separate games, one for PC like the older one and the current one which is fine for consoles.
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Camille's Photo Camille 13 Mar 2011

well, that sounds absolutely retarded...

someone kick these guys in the head, they're obviously delusional.
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SquigPie's Photo SquigPie 14 Mar 2011

Posted Image

This thread is filled with constructive criticism spam and trolling.

End of Line.



Anyway, anyone heard about the guy that couldn't activate his game because he criticised Bioware on the forums? They 72-hour banned his account. When he tried to activate the game it wouldn't let him.


After a massive backlash. It turned out that it was due to a clash between EA's and Bioware's respective rules. They let him activate his game after that.
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Magma's Photo Magma 14 Mar 2011

I just finished my first playthrough on PC, and for all the hate this game got i personally:

LOVE THIS GAME.

There truly is "consolification" symptoms and such, but taking them aside; gameplay, plot, companion developments and the variety what ending you will have by doing something differently is just...... Jawdropping.
and the ending? It just gives me the *chills* aahh, the epicness. (yes, im a fan of this game)

There were points where i just stared at the screen for about 5-10mins doing nothing and trying to think that what the hell happened there, and what to do to to even fix it a little.

But i agree on people talking here on that it might have little too much of an Mass Effect affection... But (this is my personnal opinion) i can live with that IF they keep a gap between Mass Effect and Dragon Age francise.
I really hope that Bioware doesn't continue with this "you can only customize your main character this much and only pieces of your companions" policy, it just makes you feel bad.
Even these small drawbacks here, after this experience what i've had here, i really hope that Bioware will make DAIII. |8

Well, off to play it second time, maybe this time "Angry" Hawke.
Edited by Magma, 14 March 2011 - 18:50.
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Ion Cannon!'s Photo Ion Cannon! 14 Mar 2011

Interview with Mike Laidlaw, DA2 head designer, It's kind of easy to see why DA2 turned out the way it did. He dismisses most of the criticism and says people just hate change.. Worth reading.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-03-...ge-ii-interview
Edited by Ion Cannon!, 14 March 2011 - 18:52.
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Ion Cannon!'s Photo Ion Cannon! 17 Apr 2011

Well DA2 is bombing, bombing hard. Finally gamers seem to have said "enough" and that we won't stand for this dumbed down streamlined rubbish which thinks simple is good! So just how badly is it selling? Bad enough that they're giving away ME2 if you buy it..

http://social.biowar...index/6945135/1

I still hope that DA3 comes out and It's more like DA1, and please for the love of god fire Mike Laidlaw, he hasn't got a fucking clue. http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/dragon-age-2...&pid=988968
Edited by Ion Cannon!, 17 April 2011 - 22:25.
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Raven's Photo Raven 18 Apr 2011

I am surprised at how lazy BW has been with this environment re-use thing. I am in act 2 and already all the caves and dungeons are re-used to hell. Its getting very boring :(
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Ion Cannon!'s Photo Ion Cannon! 18 Apr 2011

I expect I'll buy DA2 when It's on the cheap, Is it a bad game, no, is it a great game no, was it a massive missed opportunity yes, did it mislead its fanbase - yes. Still, It's worth £15.. probably.
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Raven's Photo Raven 18 Apr 2011

Its not a bad game. But it is a huuuuge dissapointment and BW has cut a lot of corners. DAO deserved a far better sequel.
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