Dragon Age Series

[vivisectvi]

I don't really care about the changes to the franchise, but I found this video pretty funny..

Hitler rants about Dragon Age 2

 

[vivisectvi]

New character reveal today - Anders from DAO: Awakening joins the cast. I hope Ser Pounce-a-lot is along for the ride as well.

 

[vivisectvi]

Dragon Age 2 Champion Trailer.mov

Always loved dual-wielding in the first game so I'm definitely going Rogue the first time through.

 

[Mik]

The Facebook page has all the achievements listed. Some cool ones.

I think my favorite was something like "Go a whole year without being knocked out."

I hope it really is that linear as it plays out... time wise.

 

[Mik]

This is my favorite trailer, by far.

Dragon Age 2: Rise to Power Trailer

Little Wynne sighting in the middle there.

 

[Conspiracy_Victim]

They're making a webseries starring Felicia Day as an Elven assassin. She's got plenty of experience with webseries ("The Guild", "Dr. Horrible" etc.) and she's cute in a schoolteacher sort of way, so I'll probably watch it.

Plus, if Bioware gets a million downloads of the DA2 demo, they'll release two in-game items. So, now I guess we just wait for the demo.

 

[Mik]

Anybody play the demo yet?

 

[Mik]

Ok - demo is great. Plays a lot faster and button-smashier, but part of that is the mechanics of the demo. Can't set tactics, or equipment, or anything really. Even still I think it's going to play a bit faster.

The bits they showed off were good... most likely the beginning of the game... punctuated by

Spoiler

being saved by Flemeth out of nowhere.

Then it jumped a fair bit to a boss fight. It seemed interesting but there was no back story to that part so I have no idea why anything was going on.

Can't wait.

 

[vivisectvi]

One thing.. I love the new design direction but I hate the new look for the generic Darkspawn. They look much more horrific in the first game.

 

[Mik]

I agree. New design looks great. Flemeth looks a million times better. The Darkspawn were scarier looking in Origins but also maybe a little too similar to the orcs in Lord of the Rings? Particularly the Battle at Ostagar was like the end of The Two Towers.

 

[vivisectvi]

I don't like they way they look like generic corpses with perfectly clean armor that is the same across the board. Maybe there'll be differences in the full game with genlocks and hurlocks and whatever the other one was (murlock?) but yeah.. the hurlocks in the demo are pretty generic. =\

I really liked Flemeth's look in the demo, too. I can dig that she looks drastically different too, given who she is and what she can do.

 

[Edwin]

Demo was great. Playing mage in particular feels a lot faster; cooldowns are less noticeable and the quick-use for abilities works much better. The archery abilities the dwarven rogue has feel a lot better built than archery was in DA:O, too.

It looks like the skill trees are a bit more limited, but I like the webbed way they appear to be built. Wide range of them as well. I applaud. As for conversation, the icon in the middle of the wheel seems pretty fun, and as long as there are plenty of options it shouldn't be too simplistic. I think Bioware mostly put that in so people wouldn't actually get sucked into romances they don't want.

 

[Mik]

You're right. I played again as a mage and I found it much better than playing as mage in DA:O.

I'll still go warrior, because that's what I always do but I was enjoying the mage gameplay. The area spells in particular.

 

[Conspiracy_Victim]

Yeah that demo is pretty awesome. The character models have been cleaned up pretty well. Aveline and Isabella look a lot better than in the stills. I prefer the button masher gameplay as well, since I spent most of Origins hitting the A button anyway try to get the character to attack faster. I'll still play the sterotypical sword and shield warrior to start off, but I might actually play a run thtough as a mage as well, something I don't usually do.

 

[Mik]

Hey, two days away. Can't wait. Now that it's almost here, so glad I got the Signature Edition and all the goodies that came with it.

 

[vivisectvi]

Definitely! Played through the demo again last night in anticipation!

 

[909]

Got it. Not going to play for a while as I haven't finished the first one. Or Awakening. Or Borderlands. Or Mass Effect 2. Or Final Fantasy XIII. Or Red Dead Redemption. Or Fable III. And countless other games.

 

[Edwin]

Uh oh. Bioware has confirmed that they screwed up auto attack on the console versions--it just doesn't exist--which is pretty weak. Early returns on their forums also say that the import function is broken, and that story flags aren't working, both for the import and for DA2 in-game decisions being reflected later in the game. When you're making customers commit to your product months ahead of time to get launch day DLC for free, you probably ought to make sure that the fundamental gameplay options are good to go when that release date comes.

 

[vivisectvi]

Man, that sucks. I'm sure they'll patch it.. but that's no excuse nor is it a comfort. Really makes me wonder what the QA process is for games these days. How do you not notice something like auto-attack? How do you not notice something like decisions not taking effect when your entire game is built around decisions changing the story? Brutal.

 

[Edwin]

Justice is served. From my buddy at Bioware:

"I had 3 cups of coffee and a breakfast burrito this morning, so I'll go take my massive shit in the bathroom near some DA guys."

In the case of auto attack, it's particularly bad, since the devs who post on the forums have repeatedly said that auto attack was good to go and locked topics about it. I think they just didn't want people cancelling pre-orders out of the fear this was going to play like Golden Axe.

 

[vivisectvi]

I don't mind the auto-attack thing as much as the decisions not taking any effect. =\

 

[Mik]

I've had no issues. Save ported no problem and attack seems to be working fine. I don't know...

 

[Edwin]

Auto attack is in on PC, but on the consoles you do have to press the attack button over and over again.

 

[Vigo]

I honestly don't know what the hell videogame companies are doing these days when it comes to testing. I mean I can understand missing minor things but you've got this, the save corruption in Mass Effect 2 on the PS3, Fallout New Vegas pretty much the whole game is fucked due to the freezing and certain broken quests. It makes you wonder what the hell they're exactly doing when they test these games. It's come to the point where I don't they test them very much at all and are pretty much depending on the general public to do that for them in the first couple weeks of release, because fuck it, we can always release a patch, right?

 

[Mik]

Well, hilariously enough the entirely of Dragon Age Origins is complete about 90 minutes in to the game. Ha! Oh by the way while you were off doing this for a year the hero of Ferelden ended the Blight. Splendid!

Just dicking around in Kirkwall now. The city is HUGE. The amount of loot got by getting the Signature Edition is almost absurd.

 

[Vigo]

For those of you who ordered the SE version of the game and are planning on downloading the soundtrack it appears that it's a .zip file filled with .wav files instead of .mp3s and so it's a pretty big file at 725mb. Kind of stupid on their part as it's not 1998 anymore.

 

[Scroby]

So auto attack is something EA fucked up on? That's why I'm mashing the fuck out of my A button to hit people? Motherfucker!

 

[vivisectvi]

For those of you who ordered the SE version of the game and are planning on downloading the soundtrack it appears that it's a .zip file filled with .wav files instead of .mp3s and so it's a pretty big file at 725mb. Kind of stupid on their part as it's not 1998 anymore.

It's not 1998, but WAV files are still a standard and are usually of higher quality than mp3 files.

 

[vivisectvi]

So auto attack is something EA fucked up on? That's why I'm mashing the fuck out of my A BUTTon to hit people? Motherfucker!

Yep. It was supposed to be in there, but something happened and the code update was left out of the final product. Should be patched though.

 

[ViciousFish]

My game glitched. I was doing the Duty quest in the docks and night and was standing on the passage without realizing it was there. Killed the guys but because I was auto attacking I immediately went down the passage when they were dead and when I went back to loot them they were gone and won't respawn so I can't finish the quest.