Dragon Age 2

TheOneFreeMan

TheOneFreeMan

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Given that the rumoured release date is February 2011 (that's 15 months after the release of the first one) ... what's the feeling about this game?

I can't see it having any improvements at all over the first one in that kind of timeframe. They'll have to put all their development effort into making a new campaign, leaving nothing left to fix what was wrong with the first. Namely the plastic characters, unbelievable romances and boring combat. Hopefully it's just a rumour and we won't actually be seeing DA2 until 2012.

What do we want to see in DA2, then?
 
I haven't even played Awakening yet . . .


BUT it'd be nice to see/hear main character voices, even though it probably won't happen due to the sheer amount of dialogue involved
 
I can't play Awakenings since the 1.03 patch causes the game to crash every couple of minutes. Would be nice if they fixed the first game before finishing the second.
 
I will forever be going back to Baldur's Gate I & II. I don't frankly see myself going back to Dragon Age more than maybe once. So I am not sure that I care what they put in it. :E
 
I'm nowhere close to finishing the first let alone think about a sequel!
 
I'd love to see a new part of the world outside of Ferelden.

I must be one of the few people on these boards that loved every second of the game.
 
Game was really good. Looking forward to the next.
 
Lucid said:
I'd love to see a new part of the world outside of Ferelden.

I must be one of the few people on these boards that loved every second of the game.
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Game was really good, but I think I'm with VictimOfScience here. You compare any given thing in Dragon Age except for graphics and they already did it much, much better in Baldur's Gate 2. I wonder sometimes why they didn't just take what they did there and try and make it better, instead of watering those elements down to produce something graphically pretty.

For instance, none of the NPCs start important character-developing conversations unless you approach them in camp. That was one of the best things in BG2; your characters talking to you while you were travelling around. Always being the one to initate any deep conversations makes it all so ... unbelievable. Plastic characters. Not impressed with the voice acting at times as well (Claudia Black is surprisingly wooden as Morrigan). The combat in DA is repetitive and one-dimensional as well, but that's been true of every Bioware game where they haven't been using the D&D mechanics; they just can't seem to make the gameplay interesting on their own.

This is more just a rant than anything now ... but BG2 was the first Bioware game to have all the elements we've come to expect from Bioware RPGs. You'd think they'd keep what's important as they go forward, but they're not.

Btw VictimOfScience ... some bright spark is developing BG2 for Dragon Age's engine.
 
Eh, BG2 combat was pretty crap aside from mages... well, sorcerers. Melee and archery were stupidly simplistic, take off your rose-tinted glasses.
 
Simplistic, yeah ... but it actually required a bit of healthy strategising to take down big enemies. You can't just charge at a dragon and use ranged attacks and expect to get anywhere in BG2, as you can in DA. For god's sake, all I had to do to ...

... defeat Flemeth when she transformed into a dragon was sit just out of reach and have a couple of mages repeatedly fire their staff-blasts at her. She was a frickin' huge dragon and I took her down like that. When you met a dragon in BG2, you needed to bring out some serious guns to bring it down.

In BG2, at least high-level enemies used loads of skills and spells which would absolutely decimate you if you just charged in. In Dragon Age it literally comes down to a couple of useful area effect spells and making sure you have healers in your party, and you're sorted for pretty much anything.

Ok, maybe it's rose-tinted glasses, and objectively BG2's combat wasn't anything special ... but Dragon Age's is worse.
 
Guh, Dragon Age was so bad. I can't even really describe how bad it was.. but compared to Mass Effect and KoTOR, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It felt like an Obsidian game. Won't be buying a sequel. Maybe rent.
 
Things I'd like for DA2:


Choice of voices for main character

Smart AI for companions... if we're going to stick to mainly controlling one character at a time for the consoles, let's actually do this right... ArenaNet was able to make convincing AI for Guild Wars that would make use of skills that you chose for them, so this is nothing new. All we should have to do is specify a skill set that we would prefer that character to use. And for god's sake don't make us waste any skill points for better AI.

Consolidate the stat points... magic and willpower should be one stat, and cunning and dexterity should be one stat. That would make it STR/DEX/INT/CON... nice and simple. No more assigning stat points each level, either... make it automatic for each class, and leave the thinking about stats to gear choice. Speaking of which...

At least make an effort on itemization. For ****'s sake. We should be wearing a new full set of gear every couple of levels, and don't make it look ****ing retarded like literally all the mage gear from the first game. Some color would be nice as well.

Skills and spells should not be locked into specific trees. Skill and spell descriptions should provide exact damage and modifier numbers.

No more party influence system... just have the characters respond appropriately to each situation that comes up and maybe reference it again later. That's actually cool gameplay and not just a punishment system for not catering to everyone's little whim.

Virtually all spell effects need to be redone to not look so wooden and discontinuous with the environment. New sound as well. Personal spell effects also need to go away during cutscenes and conversations.

More focus on smaller battles and not just battling swarms that degenerate into area-of-effect fiestas. Battles also need to start in closer proximity so each fight doesn't begin with a half-mile run for any melee characters while they get nailed with arrows and spells from a ridiculous range.

Copy tab-targeting from World of Warcraft.

Magic missile should be a spell.

Please make the whole game linear and just throw in some awesome sidequests. I'm very sick of the "Bioware formula" that consists of "intro -> a few objectives you can do in any order but won't affect each other -> linear ending". Let's actually try to tell a cool story from start to finish.

Class specializations should actually mean something other than having access to a few extra abilities. They should change your core gameplay in some meaningful way.

Consider upping the party size to six if you actually get the AI right. More characters is more fun!

More non-standard battles like the lightning dragon from Awakening that would periodically split into a ring of sparks that you have kill before they reach the center and heal the dragon.

Either a bigger inventory or less useless shit lying around.

Action-queuing system. I have more control over units in Starcraft II than my characters in Dragon Age. That's laughable.



In summary, just make me the lead designer. That would probably be easier.
 
TheOneFreeMan said:
Simplistic, yeah ... but it actually required a bit of healthy strategising to take down big enemies. You can't just charge at a dragon and use ranged attacks and expect to get anywhere in BG2, as you can in DA. For god's sake, all I had to do to defeat a dragon was sit just out of reach and have a couple of mages repeatedly fire their staff-blasts at her. She was a frickin' huge dragon and I took her down like that. When you met a dragon in BG2, you needed to bring out some serious guns to bring it down.
Click to expand...

Or stand out of its line of sight and spam AoE spells such as cloudkill

...yeah, kinda rose-tinted there buddy.
 
Oh, come on... if you abused game mechanics like spamming cloudkill on dragons in Baldur's Gate, you were really just a cheating idiot. That type of shit can't really be held against their design in general. If you actually fight the dragons head-on it's rather fun. Most of the strategy comes from spell-casting and positioning, but hey... it's better than most of the stuff in Dragon Age.
 
He was using an example of abusing game mechanics in Dragon Age to demonstrate how the combat in DA is inferior to that in Baldur's Gate 2, I countered with an almost identical example from BG2.
 
No no Eejit ... your example abuses what can only be described as a bug; that monsters sometimes don't respond to being hit by AoE spells when outside of line-of-sight. That's an exploit.

What I was referring to was Dragon Age's one-dimensional "everything will fall down as long as you hit it for long enough and heal fast enough" way of battles. You use a few AoE spells, and you're sorted for the big hoards. All the battles are pretty much the same. I'm not holding up BG2 as an example of perfection, but it was better at this part, at least. But hey, maybe I am looking at it through rose-tinted glasses, as you say. Dragon Age got it wrong, regardless.
 
Great news. One can hope that a sequel will be a better game than its predecessor. Less issues, more effective gameplay. Given that Dragon Age is already a good/great game.
 
Awakening was kind of a disappointment. I never felt like I got in to it. Not at all worth $40, but luckily I paid $20. Hopefully this sequel is as good as the first one. I wouldn't mind if it took place in an entirely different realm or time.
 
TheOneFreeMan said:
No no Eejit ... your example abuses what can only be described as a bug; that monsters sometimes don't respond to being hit by AoE spells when outside of line-of-sight. That's an exploit.

What I was referring to was Dragon Age's one-dimensional "everything will fall down as long as you hit it for long enough and heal fast enough" way of battles. You use a few AoE spells, and you're sorted for the big hoards. All the battles are pretty much the same. I'm not holding up BG2 as an example of perfection, but it was better at this part, at least. But hey, maybe I am looking at it through rose-tinted glasses, as you say. Dragon Age got it wrong, regardless.
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Man, I never stop to think what a bunch of nerds inhabit these forums until I see posts like this. You're just... such a nerd.
 
I played through Dragon Age once, never again, it was a disappointing experience and the fantasy world felt generic beyond belief to me.
 
Gargantou said:
I played through Dragon Age once, never again, it was a disappointing experience and the fantasy world felt generic beyond belief to me.
Click to expand...

It was well written and well voiced. Character animations were a little wonky at a times but it didn't take too much away from it. For being such a long game it, flowed nicely and kept me playing for huge chunks of time day after day. The expansion prolly took me longer to complete than the original because I just didn't want to play it. Here's hoping they don't just churn out another Cash-Cow-Milker.
 
I bought Dragons Age thinking it was a completely different game. I will not make this mistake with the second.
 
Sheepo said:
Man, I never stop to think what a bunch of nerds inhabit these forums until I see posts like this. You're just... such a nerd.
Click to expand...

What did you expect, jocks?
 
yeah to be fair you are on a half-life/valve fan site what do you really expect?
 
I have the 1st game but only put like 15 hrs into it. ME2 was a much more polished game and this one I got for $20. Plus the game skips a lot on my PC
 
StarBob said:
It was well written and well voiced.
Click to expand...

From what I've played and heard the characters and plot are generic fantasy 101. Though I suppose that's what the game's trying for.
 
A massive chunk of modern games fall into the generic fantasy bucket these days. The only thing that ever saves any story from following the standard: 1) You are a relatively weak mundane person destined for greatness 2) You find out about something bad and are supposed to stop it 3) You grow and develop until you can stop it and then do so - is that once in a while there's a twist in the story.

The thing that makes Dragon Age good is not so much that it has some exceptional twist or amazing new story, but that you connect with the story. Also, the functional aspects of the gameplay are entertaining and challenging at times (though this was seemingly removed in the expansion) and they grow effectively in the game. Really, Bioware does this with all their games. Dynamic story telling and action-strategy gameplay is sort of their thing. It's true that Mass Effect 2 is more polished, but that was always the case. That engine is perfect for what Mass Effect delivers. Not to mention, it's a sequel. Bioware got plenty of feedback on what ME1 did wrong and streamlined it. I figure they'll do the same in DA2 - hopefully better than they did in the expansion.
 
For example, I hated Mass Effect 1 at first...it got a little better, but overall I thought it was "OK", I'll never play it again.

Dragon Age hit the realm of "Excellent", one of the best RPGs I've ever played. After beating it, I went back and played all the other starts. Excellent story, and fantastic characters that you connected with.

Still waiting for a sale on Mass Effect 2. I refuse to pay 50$ for it, sooo...waiting for a weekend deal, or maybe a cheap box of it.
 
Well I'm not gonna mess around, that's a hell of a video.
 
I was not thrilled with the 1st despite wanting to be so bad. This new trailer makes me a little more exicted. I think when they focus more Bioware really shines. Baldur's Gate had great focus and will stand way up in good company at the top of my all-time best games list. I will stay a little more optimistic about this one now. Thanks!!
 
And the AI will actually be good.

That trailer was pretty nice.

Anyway, I'm not really sure if I'll get this, I bought Dragon Age and played it through, but nothing about it relaly stuck with me, I can't even remember the names of the characters or enemies etc.

By the way, does Dragon Age 2 plan to make use of Dragon Age 1 savegames for at least the world itself, ala Mass Effect 2?
 
Gargantou said:
And the AI will actually be good.

That trailer was pretty nice.

Anyway, I'm not really sure if I'll get this, I bought Dragon Age and played it through, but nothing about it relaly stuck with me, I can't even remember the names of the characters or enemies etc.

By the way, does Dragon Age 2 plan to make use of Dragon Age 1 savegames for at least the world itself, ala Mass Effect 2?
Click to expand...

Playing through Dragon Age again was boring, tho I did have fun the first time. I'm really enjoying Awakenings and that has got me back into the game.
 
I'm not sure what to think about this one. I've got a feeling it'll be aimed for more to the console crowd.
 
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