Dragon Age

A couple of new screens :

• One◊
• Two◊

Also, a bit of info about the characters from a Game Star article:

• Bethany: mage sister of Hawke
• Cassandra: inquisitor with interest in Hawke
• Varric: dwarven friend of Hawke and narrator
• Flemeth will reappear

edited 14th Jul '10 5:33:51 AM by WUE

I'm going to guess that Bethany will be our Sacrificial Lamb. Hawke lives in Lothering and I suspect he's going to need a personal reason to hate the darkspawn I think I've seen concept art of Varric. He looks kind of cool. Anyone else want to bet that Cassandra and Varric will be this game's equivalent of Alistair and Morrigan (or Carth and Bastila, or Dawn Star and Sagacious Zu, or Kaidan and Ashley or Jacob and Miranda.

Edit: We really need a preview button on the forums.

Edit 2: I can't find the exact post, but according to David Gaider, the graphics shown in the pictures aren't final.

edited 14th Jul '10 9:06:28 AM by lrrose

^ Of course they aren't going to be final :P Still, it's sloppy marketing to release screenshots of really poor quality, and I'm surprised EA would pull a move like that. Either they didn't have any better looking build to show at the time or they really screwed up their first impression as far as looks go.

Bumping this with the Game Informer's article scans.

A bit of a warning to 360 users. Don't install the new patch. It has a tendency to make the game unplayable. I guess I'll have to wait a little longer to obtain the Velanna sidequest.

Edit: Apparently this only effects Slim users. Since I have an Arcade with a hard drive (long story), it shouldn't affect me, but I'm not downloading the damn thing unless EA/Bioware releases a statement explaining what the problem is or does another patch.

Edit 2: It affects some Elites, and since an Arcade is just an Elite that doesn't come with a hard drive, I think I made the right choice in not downloading it.

edited 21st Jul '10 10:34:44 AM by lrrose

Hi-res screenshots with some new landscapes thrown in.

I think that dragon is the first model for DA 2 I actually like.

IGN preview of Dragon Age 2

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/110/1108057p1.html

Thoughts:

1. 360 combat seems to be identical to the original's 360 combat.

2. Mr. Hatfield has clearly never played the original.

^ He also has no clue on how to write a decent preview. That REALLY sucked. SUCKEDSUCKEDSUCKEDSUCKED.

^Apparently he got the dialogue wheel wrong too

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/3209421&lf=8

Well, you cannot write ignorant ... sorry.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22948

^ I appreciate you posting, but I'm not sure what the purpose of that article is, since they simply.. hum.. copy-paste sections of the IGN preview. What the..? Thanks anyway.

According to this post, they'll be playing around with unreliable narrators and letting it have an impact on gameplay.

Christ, I loathe Bioware social boards, every time I go on there all the eye can see is Ruined FOREVER posts. Its moronic. I've actually lost my temper and laid into them a couple of times.

I'm personally optimistic. I think Hawke is a more obvious parallel to Revan in terms of how defined he is than Shepard. I think everyone's favorite Spectre has become fairly synonymous with voiced CRPG protagonist however. The dialogue wheel seems better implemented too, from what little I've seen it will have more options which give a better portrayal of what will be said.

That IGN article was horrible. All the talk of "We fought Orcs!" and "An icon delineates good and evil options!" thankfully David Gaider popped up on the forums and said he's totally got the dialogue wheel wrong. I love how much of a Broken Base such a fledgling series has already gotten.

EDIT: Tying into what has been said about unreliable narrators, the devs have said the demo shown at Comic Con is exaggerated and doesn't represent what will actually be like. David Gaider says that it's meant to represent the way Hawke's legend has been exaggerated. They're still sticking too the statement that PC combat will be the same.

Here is a nice thread with Mr. Gaider confirming what I just said as well as discussing the dialogue wheel: [1]

edited 24th Jul '10 6:22:53 PM by Wagrid

Things I've learned from the Bioware social boards:

Bioware forces you to download all DLC

Anyone who says anything good about an upcoming Bioware game/DLC is a mindless drone who will buy anything Bioware makes.

That a five dollar DLC should take 5 hours to complete.

That Mass Effect 2 is simultaneously the worst and best game ever

That Tali is the main character of Mass Effect

That Hawke should be able to fight off the darkspawn horde that destroys Lothering at the beginning of the game, or else (s)he's a coward.

That Bioware is to blame for Microsoft's flawed patch certification process.

I genuinely chuckled at your post Irrose. I also sigh, however, because my experience has been exactly the same. You'd think as Bioware's boards they would be full of there greatest and most loyal fans. Not lunatics who think the games industry have just stopped after Baldur's Gate 2.

The sad part is, the devs use it as a medium to interact with their fans, and communicate in an open and honest way. Most known information about Dragon Age 2 is from that board. Yet, every time a dev goes on there to clear something up or impart knowledge they get a hundred posts and threads about how they and their colleagues are PURE EVIL.

edited 25th Jul '10 5:30:30 AM by Wagrid

The devs must have the best therapists in the world if they haven't gone insane from the Fan Dumb they deal with. They are actually really nice and patient people. I'm just waiting for one of them to snap and become the George RR Martin of Bio Ware.

edited 24th Jul '10 11:57:36 PM by SandwichofTruthiness

^ Considering the money they make I doubt they would be THAT bothered honestly. It's not like they are some poor indies.

I get the image of when one of the mods retries of him just going on the forums and saying that he can't hear the trolls over his vast pile of money

^ Lol. Mind you, I didn't want to imply that they're navigating in the money, but going all 'ooh poooor little deeeeeeevs, how can they resist with all that Fan Dumb' seems a bit overdramatic to me.

Hmm, if the combat system is being kept essentially the same, I think I'll give the sequel a miss, then. I find the combat excruciatingly boring. But there seems to be enough old school Baldurs Gate fans who like it that way, so I guess I'll leave them to enjoy it and stick to Mass Effect.

I hope that they combine Mass Effect 1&2's best points to create der Uber RPG

They're not taking a single aspect of Mass Effect. They're just using a dialogue wheel (one entirely different to Mass Effect's). That's the point the poor devs have been trying to make. Mass Effect is a whole different series and Dragon Age will remain Dragon Age.

Mass Effect is a whole different approach to making an RPG anyway, and I love how petty people get about it. "Oh it's not an RPG! You can't chose from 100 barely different weapons!" as if that's the important part, not the epic story or character interaction. That said, I always feel like Shepard is Bioware's character, not mine and I'm just deciding whether or not he's friendly or mean.

GameSpot preview