BioWare announces Dragon Age 2. ETR March 2011

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by kirant

Hearing something weird about this game, would like to ask about confirmation (was in class at the time). Apparently Bioware shut down their forums for a little (it's up now) because the babies off of 4chan decided to spam the place to hell and back (something about not liking it turn into a more action-y game than the original).

No idea. I tend to stay away from a games dedicated forums until well after launch day. And generally until after I've beaten it a time or two myself.

However, as somewhat expected, Bioware's servers for downloads were brutally slow for me today. Maybe because of 4chan, maybe because of use.

[Mazrim]

I'm not a fan of this game...it's streamlining the RPG format to an extreme in my opinion. It feels like Bioware has taken any semblence of customization out of Dragon Age, and is steering it towards an action game.

To quote someone else:

It's going to be funny watching people praise how "open world" the game is despite the game keeping you basically in one city and the surrounding area for the vast majority of it, and you can't talk to any NPC unless they give you an actual quest or sell you something. And the storytelling is atrocious. Characters have no reason to be around you, time passes instantly and new characters show up with no preamable or introduction and everyone mentions things that seemed to have happened during some time jump that is never made clear. It's like an RPG version of The Room.

Your party can't change anything equipment-wise unless it's part of the story or I guess you can also find full suits of armor to change them. But whatever drops you find are for the main character and if you aren't the right class then oops you get nothing. Hopefully you aren't a mage like me because no one in town drops anything for you ever.

And talk about streamlined. Quests are like 2 minutes long. There's no adventuring. When you need to go to an area for something, say, an ambush at Sundermount, you go out to the map and an icon shows up that says SUNDERMOUNT AMBUSH SITE and you go there and just fight the guys that are there (it also has to tell you the name of the quest associated with that location on the map) and then oops you're done. Nothing to look for anywhere.

I guess I agree with people who think this is more like a new Mass Effect than a new Dragon Age. I'm okay with taking out some of the tedious RPG elements that no one wants (hello Herbalism) but sometimes that's taken a bit too far.

[3 Justin 3]

I haven't played it yet (just the demo) but from what I have read it seems like this game is a step backwords.

I don't understand why bioware keeps developing these kickass RPG's (me1 and doa) but then totally streamlines the sequel. Not to say the sequels aren't good, but they seem to be stripping a lot of features off.

At least we got Awakening which was cool.

[bugsy]

Marketing. There's probably still a lot of reasons to have PC-only RPGs (everything from Ultima and Magic Candle to Baldurs Gate come to mind) but the problem here is likely that DAO did well enough of on all platforms. Why sell to one market when you can sell to three? As a dude with only a mid range laptop but also with an Xbox 360 who didn't enjoy the 'hardcore' aspects of DAO as they appeared on the console, I'm really looking forward to the more console-friendly emphasis of the sequel.

[Meelapo]

If you're on the 360 and you feel that DA2 won't provide you with your dungeon crawler fix then pick up Torchlight today!

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Henry Fool

If you want a challenge for a high level character, then the Golems of Something DLC has the single toughest fight in the entire game, against the Harvester. If I recall correctly, if you get the achievement for killing it on Hard or Insanity level, you get this weapon in the main campaign that you can sell for a silly amount of gold. Like 300 or something. You can luck out in that fight if you swarm the main enemy in the right way, which was what happened to me in my nth try, but usually it's just ridiculous.

I just tried this out today. Really is an insanely difficult fight. Made much, much worse by the fact that you have no mage unless your PC is one.

Kind of annoying actually. You pretty much have to have an entire party spec'd just for that fight to get through it on higher difficulty levels.

[MickMcGeough]

Liking DA2 so far but like a lot of others I'm a bit annoyed at the simplification of character development and inventory. It doesn't bother me all that much at low levels but I think it'll really take away from the game at high levels.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by 3 Justin 3

I haven't played it yet (just the demo) but from what I have read it seems like this game is a step backwords.

I don't understand why bioware keeps developing these kickass RPG's (me1 and doa) but then totally streamlines the sequel. Not to say the sequels aren't good, but they seem to be stripping a lot of features off.

At least we got Awakening which was cool.

i hate this argument for ME1. what exactly was stripped away? a terrible vehicle driving system with boring featureless planets, a pointless loot system (only 4 or 5 armor suits in the entire game were useful, and the best guns in the game you had to buy), a bloated skillpoint system (having to put points in your gun slots and renegade/paragon points were just dumb) and the godawful simon says minigame

all they stripped away from ME1 was the useless fluff. it was never an RPG in the traditional sense from the beginning, so i'm not sure why people got upset that Bioware played ME2 up to it's core strengths

[Hemi-Cuda]

as for DA2, i quite like it. i've never been a huge fan of traditional RPG's, i've always been more of an action oriented gamer. so to me the action-RPG genre is one of my favorite genres, as you still get a good storyline with choices to make but you're not bogged down by having to sort through hundreds of inventory items or making sure you have the best tactical layout for all your party members. that was one of my biggest gripes with DA:O, you basically had to have a healing spec'd mage in your party at all times. it really narrowed down the choices for who to have in your party

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

i hate this argument for ME1. what exactly was stripped away? a terrible vehicle driving system with boring featureless planets, a pointless loot system (only 4 or 5 armor suits in the entire game were useful, and the best guns in the game you had to buy), a bloated skillpoint system (having to put points in your gun slots and renegade/paragon points were just dumb) and the godawful simon says minigame

all they stripped away from ME1 was the useless fluff. it was never an RPG in the traditional sense from the beginning, so i'm not sure why people got upset that Bioware played ME2 up to it's core strengths

Weapon mods, ammo mods (as inventory items), and armour mods. That's not even getting into the actual gameplay changes. I didn't mind the point system either... having certain points unlock abilities and new branches gave it an element of strategy that ME2 didn't have.

(I missed my frictionless guns, and my medical exoskeletons that allowed me to keep overkill/marksman on at all times.)

[Yeah_Baby]

To a limited extent you could mod your armour and upgrade your guns in ME 2.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Yeah_Baby

To a limited extent you could mod your armour and upgrade your guns in ME 2.

Yes, a very limited extent.

[Hack&Lube]

Maybe it's EA's doing? Maybe they mandated they streamline and dumb down games to be more friendly to a mainstream audience, especially with how consoles are their biggest segment now. Dragon Age 1 was already a much more simplified game on consoles than PC.

Many said that DAO was a very strategic and difficult RPG in the vein of Bioware's PC classics like Baldur's Gate. The difficulty level and complexity might have been toned down to try to appeal to a larger audience.

Next time I have a chance to ask my evil Oilers-fan cousin who did a lot of work on both Dragon Age games, I'll ask for his opinion on why this is so.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by SebC

Weapon mods, ammo mods (as inventory items), and armour mods. That's not even getting into the actual gameplay changes. I didn't mind the point system either... having certain points unlock abilities and new branches gave it an element of strategy that ME2 didn't have.

(I missed my frictionless guns, and my medical exoskeletons that allowed me to keep overkill/marksman on at all times.)

see though you just explained my biggest gripe with ME1, it was too easy. even on insanity i never once died with my infiltrator because of frictionless mods and marksman. i had much more fun with the same class in ME2 because i was forced to vary my weapon choice a bit, saving my sniper rifle ammo for the stronger enemies and making sure my headshots counted. i'm not sure how ME1 could have more strategy than ME2 when you never once had to use cover, and the ammo/armor mods you mentioned were the only real ones worth using

ME1 gave the illusion of being a deeper RPG than it was because of a lot of fluff. ME2 simply cut all that away and presented the game as it really was

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

see though you just explained my biggest gripe with ME1, it was too easy. even on insanity i never once died with my infiltrator because of frictionless mods and marksman. i had much more fun with the same class in ME2 because i was forced to vary my weapon choice a bit, saving my sniper rifle ammo for the stronger enemies and making sure my headshots counted. i'm not sure how ME1 could have more strategy than ME2 when you never once had to use cover, and the ammo/armor mods you mentioned were the only real ones worth using

ME1 gave the illusion of being a deeper RPG than it was because of a lot of fluff. ME2 simply cut all that away and presented the game as it really was

The problem was that ME1 was not hard enough. It would have been extremely easy to make all those items and equipment and stats purposeful by cranking up the difficulty and reducing the amount of items you can scavange and the ridiculous amount of money you make selling things. Make things more scarce, force the player to use what he can scavenge, make money harder to come by, give the enemies greater damage/health, etc. and suddenly all that fluff is more purposeful. I think ME1 was dumbed down a lot for widespread console release as well.

Bioware's old PC RPGs were totally unforgiving. Walk into the wrong situation with the wrong gear and no strategy and it was almost instant death against an enemy far more powerful than you.

[Esoteric]

This is very still much a strategy/tactical RPG on the increased difficulties. Tactics matter, and it's still a very interesting game to play. I love the speed increase to combat, the first one I found that characters were on cooldown/exausted for a lot of the fight.

It's still a Dragon Age game, and it still rocks.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

see though you just explained my biggest gripe with ME1, it was too easy. even on insanity i never once died with my infiltrator because of frictionless mods and marksman. i had much more fun with the same class in ME2 because i was forced to vary my weapon choice a bit, saving my sniper rifle ammo for the stronger enemies and making sure my headshots counted. i'm not sure how ME1 could have more strategy than ME2 when you never once had to use cover, and the ammo/armor mods you mentioned were the only real ones worth using

ME1 gave the illusion of being a deeper RPG than it was because of a lot of fluff. ME2 simply cut all that away and presented the game as it really was

The ammo mods were the ones where you could do a lot of different things with them. ME2 pretty much took those out. And whilst med exos, frictionless mods, and spectre gear beats anything else, for most of the game you don't have those, and when you did, you didn't have as many of them as you'd want.

ME1 was certainly too easy, but that's a balance issue, not streamlining and mechanics. I did spend way too much time in my inventory screen, but's just because I wanted to hold onto 12 of each ammo mod and there was a 150 item cap, plus some of the ammo mods got worse at level 8.

Global cooldowns took out a ton of strategy.

[Coys1882]

Man - this game is getting lit up by User reviews on Metacritic:

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii

Is it really that bad?

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Coys1882

Man - this game is getting lit up on by User reviews on Metacritic:

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii

Is it really that bad?

Wow that's a really strange division. Loved by critics, hated by users.

I think in general if you go in expecting the depth and sophistication of DA:O you'll be disappointed, but there are loads of other improvements and it's still fun as hell to play (I'm only a few hours in though).

[HeartsOfFire]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

I'm not a fan of this game...it's streamlining the RPG format to an extreme in my opinion. It feels like Bioware has taken any semblence of customization out of Dragon Age, and is steering it towards an action game.

To quote someone else:

I guess I agree with people who think this is more like a new Mass Effect than a new Dragon Age. I'm okay with taking out some of the tedious RPG elements that no one wants (hello Herbalism) but sometimes that's taken a bit too far.

You can't please everybody. Trying to please everybody is the guaranteed path to failure. There are going to be people that are disappointed, upset (and possibly even nerd-raging) at the direction that BioWare has taken Dragon Age with this game since falling under the wing of EA. I don't know if this is part of the direction BioWare is taking themselves, or if there isn't some bit of pressure coming from EA themselves. But whatever the reason, the fault lies not with the developers, but with the gamers and their false sense of entitlement.

The amount of customization that was available in Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age: Origins was--in comparison to the amount of customization available in their respective sequels--overwhelming. Too often in Mass Effect 1 I found myself spamming the 'sell' button at the store to get rid of junk items I picked up from mission to mission. Sure the variety of weapons, armor, and mods was nice, but there was too much of it. Likewise in Dragon Age 2, I found too often that I'd pick up an item, stop what I was doing, go into my inventory screen, and spend a godawful amount of time comparing that one item to an equivalent item I already had equipped, or that one of my 3 party members had equipped. Either the item was junk, of comparable value, or a definite must have. And if it was any of the latter two, I just spent more time mulling over what I should do with the item I just replaced.

Now, some people--RPG enthusiasts especially--love this amount of customization. But in the world of gamers, they are a minority, and they are an elitist clique. Not every gamer wants to play something so complicated or complex, and if they spend too much time juggling their inventory instead of slaying dragons, they're not going to take much interest.

The market BioWare has catered to in the past with their borrowed franchise titles from D&D and Star Wars will always be loyal, but they are a small niche in the gaming world. I have heard nothing but great things about Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter nights, but I have never played either of them. And I am not alone. There are probably a great deal of gamers that haven't played the BioWare classics, because it's a niche that doesn't work for them.

There is a huge untapped market of gamers out there that I'm sure BioWare and EA respectively would love to tap into, but in order to do that, they have to make their products appeal to those gamers. Even if it means annoying their core audience, the elitist RPG gamers. If, at the end of the day, the changes they made cost them 500 hardcore RPG gamers, but earn them 1000 sales from gamers that would have otherwise not bought the game, I think that's a move they're willing to make.

And regardless of the mechanics involved in the game, ignoring the gameplay or itemization, or the skillset customization, at the core of every single BioWare game is not just a great game, but an epic story. A story where you, the player, are the protagonist, the hero, and the other characters in the story are depending on you to succeed. And rather than be strung along from story beginning to story's end, you have some say in the direction the hero takes. You have control over how to solve problems along the questline. The lives of certain NPCs are in your hands, and choosing to spare or kill them could inevitably lead to an interesting predicament later on. That is why I personally do not care about the changes to the gameplay mechanics of either Dragon Age or Mass Effect. At the heart of it, I want to be the hero. I want to decide the fate of both Hawke and Shepard as I would if I were them. For the most part, I'm the typical lawful good hero, so very cliche, but all the same, that sense of heroism is always there no matter what.

That is why I love BioWare. That is why I will always buy every game they make, including DLC. They provide a rich experience like no other developer has or can. And that is why in my eyes, they can do no wrong. I'm a skilled and experienced gamer, I can adapt to whatever changes they make. I'm not going to fume at my keyboard on the BioWare forums and bitch about how I can't change the armor of my party, or how I miss not being able to put mods in my Mass Effect guns.

I have universes to save.