dragon age 2

doctorie · Jul 8, 2010

http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/

Im game

Experience the epic sequel to the 2009 Game of the Year from the critically acclaimed makers of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2. You are one of the few who escaped the destruction of your home. Now, forced to fight for survival in an ever-changing world, you must gather the deadliest of allies, amass fame and fortune, and seal your place in history. This is the story of how the world changed forever. The legend of your Rise to Power begins now.

Key Features:

* Embark upon an all-new adventure that takes place across an entire decade and shapes itself around every decision you make.
* Determine your rise to power from a destitute refugee to the revered champion of the land.
* Think like a general and fight like a Spartan with dynamic new combat mechanics that put you right in the heart of battle whether you are a mage, rogue, or warrior.
* Go deeper into the world of Dragon Age with an entirely new cinematic experience that grabs hold of you from the beginning and never lets go.
* Discover a whole realm rendered in stunning detail with updated graphics and a new visual style.
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MrMakuto · Jul 9, 2010

Loved the first one, gonna love the second!

Kava · Jul 9, 2010

Nice, I'm sure it will be epic.

moneda · Aug 2, 2010

Interview with two BioWare devs about DA2~

Vandiego · Aug 2, 2010

Game informer just did a podcast on their visit/interview a lot of good info.

Kava · Aug 2, 2010

Damn, I can't wait for this game! Sounds like they are upping the pace of combat, "more responsive." If there was anything at all that I didn't like about DA:O it was the response time in combat so they kinda just nailed the only thing that I had against it. Gunna be awesome.

Sogetsu · Aug 3, 2010

I never played the first one, not really sure why.
Maybe cause I really wanted to play it on 360 for the achievements (Yeah, yeah..) and
I heard it didn't perform well on it. Plus controls, yadda yadda.

Maybe I'll grab it for PC soon? Is it a game worth playing?

Kava · Aug 3, 2010

Hell yeah it's worth playing. It's Bioware.

moneda · Aug 3, 2010

Sogetsu said: ↑

Maybe I'll grab it for PC soon? Is it a game worth playing?
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It's an in-depth RPG that lends itself for replaying because of the various back stories. The art department seemed a bit lazy [especially compared with the lore department] but overall it's a good experience. The community-made mods that extend play even further and can make even the original campaign better.

from me.

moneda · Aug 20, 2010

Previews from Gamescom...

From IGN:

Instead of controlling a n00b Grey Warden focused on extinguishing the Blight (basically like Armageddon, but with more Darkspawn and Archdemons), your new protagonist is an upcoming human champion named Hawke. While you can't choose your race (which is a major bummer) you can still pick your character's class, gender and can still customize how he or she looks.

As you assume the role of Hawke, you're immediately thrust into battle with glitzy armor, powerful abilities and a bad-ass female mage. Once you defeat waves of Darkspawn and an ogre, a dragon roars from a cliff above. Just as you think, "Oh crap, I'm screwed," you're jolted out of the battlefield to a cut-scene where a pissed off Cassandra, a raven-haired Chantry member is chastising Varric, a blinged out dwarf recalling his memories of you. Cassandra is searching for information on your character's whereabouts and calls the dwarf out on his embellished story, and it becomes clear that the earlier scene was altered by Varric's imagination.

After some banter Varric reveals that the Chantry, a church group that worships The Maker, is in ruins, the world is on the brink of war and the church needs Hawke to help reassemble the pieces. The entire story is told through these two characters in a framed narrative, so all the events you play have happened in the past, but you're shaping how the legend is told. The game world is highly reactive to your decisions, so it should be an interesting title to replay and see how it differs as you go along.

Varric begins the tale over again, narrowing in on Hawke and his family's defection from their former home, Lothering, shortly after King Cailan's demise at the battle of Ostagar. Now known as the Blightlands, their once vibrant village has been devastated after the Darkspawn have had their way with it. There's no more fancy armor or strong abilities in this tale â€“ just Hawke along with his younger brother Carver, a warrior, his sister Bethany, an apostate mage and his mother discussing their escape plan. As soon as the conversation options popped up, I immediately recognized Mass Effect's wheel of discourse, but this version has the addition of helpful indicator icons.

Thanks to these images you'll always know what sort of a response your character will give -- there's an olive branch for peaceful approaches, a comedy mask for witty remarks and a fist pump full of aggressive responses. These icons also help you distinguish when you're making a romantic move on someone, because the game of love is hard enough. Dragon Age 2 will also track how you play and model your character's greetings and goodbyes to fit his or her personality, though like in Origins there won't be an obvious "good/evil" meter.

Being the sarcastic person that I am, I chose the middle, comedic response and actually chuckled at Hawke's deadpan dialogue. Then I was on my way to slaughter the masses of Darkspawn standing between me and Kirkwall, where Hawke's remaining family still resides. In Dragon Age 2 the combat system has been stripped of the clunkiness of the original and injected with more awesome. It's much more fluid and feels faster, though people who liked the slower pace of the first game can still pause the and issue commands. Instead of a two- or three-second delay when you select an active ability, your character will instantly perform an attack or spell. Not only is it an immediate occurrence, but the actions themselves are brutal and incredibly satisfying.

Enemies don't just rush at you from one direction anymore either. Now groups will attack from the front and back, and your AI partners actually kick-ass. In Origins, group members needed to be manually programmed to take potions when they had low health or told to perform spells at certain times, but your squad is now smart enough to figure those things out on their own. You can still specifically program the, but gamers won't be forced to worry about what their AI allies are doing all the time. If anything, the AI might be too intelligent, as I often ran toward enemies only to have them burned to a crisp by my mage Bethany before I got there. Still, it's nice to have battle partners that are an asset instead of a burden.

After making my way through part of the Blightlands, Hawke's family ran into an injured Templar, Wesley and his body builder of a wife, Aveline. Although Wesley is initially aggressive toward Bethany for being an apostate, the dire situation forces the two groups to work together. Shortly after this encounter I leveled up and was able to see if that aspect of the game had changed.

For the most part, leveling up is similar to the first game. You'll receive points to allocate to attributes like Strength, Dexterity, Magic, Cunning, Willpower and Constitution, as well as choosing a new ability. The ability tree is what the team focused on re-constructing and it looks promising. Instead of linear progression, different types of abilities are grouped together in a tree. For example all abilities that involve using a two-handed weapon are bundled together and abilities that require a one-handed weapon and a shield are grouped. Abilities can also be built out further than before, as most active abilities can be upgraded at least once.

Coming full circle and we were once again threatened by an ogre and surrounding Darkspawn. The dragon up above roared and flew down toward the family, drenching the Darkspawn in flames. Once I saw that the scaly beast was helping out, I realized it had to be Flemeth, the shape-shifting witch of the wilds encountered at the beginning of the last game. Sure enough, once all the enemies were down she transformed to her human form, decked out with horn-shaped hair and revealing armor.

As payment for safe passage out of the Blightlands, Flemeth requests that the soon-to-be champion deliver a package for her. I'm sure the task won't be as easy as it seems, but unfortunately that was all I saw. At the end of my time with the game, our group of six had dwindled to four, but I'll leave who fell to the Darkspawn a mystery for you to discover on your own.

In terms of the PC version, BioWare's leaving a lot of the user-interface the same, though they have added a quick command for stamina and health potions on the right side of the action bar. You can still pause the action with the space bar and issue commands to your team, but you should expect to see some changes to how you view fights. Although what we saw wasn't final, it looks like Bioware is developing a new camera for the PC version that's focused less on getting a bird's eye view and more on zooming in around the battlefield and enemy locations. It looks great so far, but expect to hear more about closer to the game's launch.

If you were concerned that Dragon Age was being fed through the Mass Effect sausage grinder, you shouldn't be. Yes, they've adopted the conversation wheel and cinematic, fully-voiced speeches, but that's no cause for alarm â€“ after all if you developed an awesome tool and storytelling technique you'd want to use it in more than one game too. Bioware has made some great alterations -- sharper graphics, satisfying combat and cinematic conversations. I can't wait to spend more time with this game.
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From Gamepro:

# The jump in graphical fidelity between Dragon Age: Origins and its sequel is pretty stunning. Whereas the first game was overshadowed by the visuals in Mass Effect 2 â€“ Bioware's other major RPG that released a few months later â€“- Dragon Age 2 stands amongst the company's best work. Along with the more detailed characters, Bioware has infused the game with what Silverman calls â€œan ownable style.â€ The menus and characters are a bit less 'generic middle ages' than Origins, exuding a grittier look.

# The combat in Dragon Age 2 looks to cater to the visceral combat lusted by the action-loving gamers currently buying up shooters and slaughter-fests on consoles, while still keeping true to the slow-paced strategy that drives many of the PC's top titles. During combat, you can take on real-time approach, hacking at enemies. Silverman said Bioware's refined the combat so that â€œany button will do something awesome.â€ If you're more about real role-playing, you can pause the game and plan out your attacks more diligently. The strategic command wheel is still around, but pausing the battle allows you to take stock of the entire battlefield, setting up attacks for enemies who may currently be out of close range.

# Bioware is doing away with the wide-branching origin stories of the original game, instead focusing on the story of a famous male or female warrior, told in a framed narrative. That means that the story of the game is being told by one character to another (think Forrest Gump, Princess Bride, or the Usual Suspects) according to Silverman, this method of storytelling allows for the game to focus on the most exciting parts of your character's life, while also allowing for the consequences of your choices to be seen sooner.

# Moral choices have been refined in that visual icons of your character's dialog choices (like showing an olive branch for peaceful replies) will create less confusion for the context of a reply, while consistency in your character's tone will be reflected in battle cries and non-option speech. I don't believe I've ever heard a sarcastic battle cry before, but if you're glib enough during normal conversation, it'll start to come out elsewhere.

# While our demo only took place within a single time frame of the story, the gravity of the events were extremely heavy. Silverman said that the driving force of Dragon Age 2's story will be family and death. The half-hour of gameplay we were able to observe drove the point home, as the escape from the main character's homeland came at the price of the death of his brother, as well as the forced killing of his neighbor's husband. The latter came with one of the most grave choices in the demo, as the representative demoing the game had to choose between killing the infected innocent himself or passing the task off to his wife.
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MrMakuto · Aug 20, 2010

Good read!

Its also good they havnt got rid of the MASSIVE amount of blood spray (from the pics). Hey look I killed one rat.. AND EVERYTHING IS COVERED IN ITS BLOOOODD!

Sogetsu · Aug 20, 2010

Blood everywhere!

Arimil · Aug 20, 2010

They added a CG trailer.

doctorie · Aug 20, 2010

MrMakuto said: ↑

Good read!

Its also good they havnt got rid of the MASSIVE amount of blood spray (from the pics). Hey look I killed one rat.. AND EVERYTHING IS COVERED IN ITS BLOOOODD!
Click to expand...

the average anime toon has 40 gallons of blood

Sirius · Aug 24, 2010

That is true. It is definitely true.

NSman · Aug 24, 2010

They really seem to be into the story! Is there really that big a market for yet another angsty choose-your-own-adventurer thing still? I have to admit though, the Mass Effect 2 conversation system is pretty fun to play with.

Gioxide · Aug 25, 2010

The guy you are playing, Hawke, looks a bit like a younger Duncan

This game will be epic, just like DA:O and ME1 and 2

ReyVagabond · Sep 2, 2010

I was kinda turned of by the horned kunari and for some reason i liked the first darkspawn better,

but still there is a lot of time, and maybe everithing will grow in me and ill love it !

Shammy · Sep 12, 2010

Definitely excited for this game. Loved the first game, and this game is shaping up the be quite interesting.

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