The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I've got a few questions.. I actually have the signature edition pre ordered but due to lack of funds i probably wont be pickin it up till friday and by then who knows if it'll actually still be the "signature" edition or not.. Either way i wouldn't miss the games release due to how much i loved Orgins.. But on Orgins the reason i loved it so much was because of the Orgins stories and the feeling that you're actually developeing a character from scratch..
Main thing i'am wondering is how much do you're saves from Orgins/Awakening/Ect make a difference when you load the save up in DA2? Is the story gonna play out any differently? One thing i loved about Mass Effect 2 was the lasting descisions, even those made in ME1 made a difference, even though most were minor and small it's still something i really enjoyed.
Oh well, i got till friday to finish the rest of Orgins DLC Looking forward to DA2 regardless of the reviews/hype.
Well, I just got the game and I'm sure, like many others, they won't be able to tell how your DA:O saves actually affect the game.
it seems you have 3 choices of background (if I'm remember correctly) , one of them being the standard "hero of ferelden". Then there is another choice where you can load a save game from DA:O.
They indicate that your choices will somehow affect or be noted in this second installment.
As far as performance, I have a higher end machine and I have not had any issues yet.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Like I said I'm into act two, and all I've noticed about my actions in DA:O is random bar talk from npc's in the hanged man. The game itself doesn't do much at all toward the effects of DA:O on the world as a whole other than camios from Bodhan, and some talk from Anders. Oh and a few letters from home, which really annoy me because I was expecting something more than a letter and a drunk, who actually seemed to be insulting my warden.
I'm starting to think that 1.5 years is just too short to produce a fully fledged, fully featured RPG game of high quality.
Some things got to give, apparently.
Sadly I think you are right. I probably wouldn't have so many problems with the game. If they had just called it something else. Like Dragon Age: Champion of Kirkwall, and reserved the name Dragon Age 2 for something that was closer to Origins.
In War - Victory. In Peace - Vigilance. In Death - Sacrifice.
Well I down loaded and played Dragon Age 2 my first impressions where not good.
First I down loaded and and installed the trial and had problems with it running wow 1st game I have had issues running on my new PC. Unsure what you mean here when you say wow, as for having problems running DA2 DEMO my old system runs it fine.
I would get to a ceartain part of the story and it would lock up and Crash. I had to open task manager to kill the app. Sounds like the possibility of not enough memory.
I tried again 3 days latter and they must have pushed something to my PC because it seemed different and I was able to get the orge fight. They can't do anything to your system, i got past the ogre fight first time running demo.
But here it would lock up and crash again or I died before that happened at this point I couldnt get past to tough for me on normal I know lame. again the intermittent crashing and lock ups sounds like your system isn't good enough to run the game/demo.
First thing I noticed was no I could not customize my toons face wise or hight etc. Very limted. Not included in the demo.
Also combat seems to fast no time for tactical pausing, when I did it didnt help much it seemed to me. From my time in the demo combat has been changed compared to DA:O, it is more fast paced but this isn't a bad thing to me, the pause and strategy is still there just not fully integrated in the demo.
I a very big BIO Ware fan but this might be the first Time I pass on one of their games in a while. I thought the same but after a couple of times playing the demo i will be getting the game at some point.
I gues I was looking for a game very simular to Dragon Age Orgins but this game is very different for sure. Unable to judge from the demo as a lot isn't featured.
Still deciding I might wait a month and see what happens I wish I would have done that with Star Trek jumpped in too early hoping for a good game that wasnt. Likewise with Star Trek Online, however DA2 i'll get because it's a single player rather than MMO.
Ajax
At the end of the day m8 your well within your rights to hodl off before buyign the game (if at all) but from what you've put here i'd suggest getting a new system for playing more recent game and future releases.
You won't be able to customize characters....in DA2 you are playing a SPECIFIC character, not one you make up. So you can be a guy champion or a girl champion, that is it. This is COMPLETELY different than DA Origins. Not saying its bad, just a completely different take on it.
You won't be able to customize characters....in DA2 you are playing a SPECIFIC character, not one you make up. So you can be a guy champion or a girl champion, that is it. This is COMPLETELY different than DA Origins. Not saying its bad, just a completely different take on it.
That's wrong, there is character customization available after the first scene where Varric exaggerates things (basically the tutorial), the customization tool is basically the same thing as DAO's one, with different hairstyles.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
You won't be able to customize characters....in DA2 you are playing a SPECIFIC character, not one you make up. So you can be a guy champion or a girl champion, that is it. This is COMPLETELY different than DA Origins. Not saying its bad, just a completely different take on it.
You can customize characters, it was just disabled in the demo.
Now I have only played the demo, but it's true that you can't be an Elf or a Dwarf, but it's not that different I think. Ponder this - You spent a half hour to a few hours on your Origins story, and then you go to Ostegar, and it's the same from there. You're a Grey Warden, and that's it. You are a specific character, regardless on how you respond on it. People act like you could just decide not to be a Warden, and have a sex change to a Darkspawn and join a punk band in Orlais. It was not like that, at all.
Instead of the shallow Origins Stories, you have a main character who talks. I think that makes up for the lack of Elves and Dwarfs.
I am doing my third playthrough through DA Origins right now, and the more I play the less I like it. First playthrough was awesome, but this game has already aged poorly. The art is terrible, a lot of the story is childish, and the whole ordeal about fighting Darkspawn is uninteresting. The occasional awesome moments pop up like a funny remark from Stern or Alistair, or "Enchantment? Enchantment!" but the game is unpolished, and feels like playing a MMO by yourself.
At this point Mass Effect series is a much better product. It's streamlined and they got the continuity right. The changes they made to ME2 was awesome. DA2 looks completely different. A much more cool art style, hopefully a better story and better characters!?, but it doesnt feel like it belongs with DA1. The Darkspawn does not look like themselves either. It's like a alternative reality Dragon Age.
I also finished Awakening and there were some serious stuff wrong with that expansion. The whole thing about the dwarf dude(Ohgren) not remembering you was stupid. they did not execute all the choices you did in the original, and that was really really lame as it was supposed to be the major selling point of this new franchise.
A lot of us Bioware fans had hoped that Mass Effect and Dragon Age would be staple franchises like what Starcraft and Warcraft is for Blizzard, but right now I feel that Dragon Age might not deserve to bear the mantle of a great franchise.
But then again... Assassins Creed 2 showed us that a sequel can give redemption to an IP. I think everyone is speculating if The Witcher 2 is where it will be at!? That game has insane graphics.
Not really no, the art style while better make the darkspawn look like bad anime monsters. The romance plot in the game is rather stilted because any sex can do anyone. So you kind of feel like your whole party is a bit easy in the bed. The frame narrative story telling quickly makes you start feeling left out of the loop. Which to me was just wrong.
Is it really streamlined, maybe yes maybe no. The old DA:O play style had you learning skills, tallents, and leveling stats. This game is all about stats, they litterally do everything. Picking locks for a rogue, up your cunning stat, need fortitude to shrug off stuns up your strength. Want to resist magic as a warrior, then up your magic stat, which has no other use for a warrior than that.
Yes the talking between characters is still there, and yes it still feels like playing an MMO by yourself. Except where DA:O felt like say EQ or WoW DA2 feels like DDO. Your always in the same city, and you pop outside just for quests. And you pop out into the same maps you have seen dozens of times. While the frame narrative breaks make you want to know what the heck he has been doing with his free time.
One year and all the guy has to show for it is a breast plate and a sword, no experience what so ever and very little coin. The next break covers three years, and we come back to him having some social standing and a new house. Yet exactly the same ammount of coin and the same equipment he had when we left. At the same time you run into people Hawke met in those years we missed out on, and all they say is it was nice working with you when you were doing X. No more than that, like it is teasing you with the fact there is more story there but you can't know it.
I understand why they did it that way, Varric is telling his own story and he is hitting the points he cares about and nothing else. It's why the prolog is so short and act 1 is fairly long. Varric enters the story in act one, and a good bit of the cut scenes seem to revolve around him. He has tons of quips and even adds in "Hawke said diplomaticly" and "Hawke muttered in an angry aside to the dwarf." Behind things Hawke says from time to time. Without the side characters you kind of feel like Hawke has no life, and is rather aimless. Act 1 is all about getting money to not be poor, act 2 is garnering social standing.
DA:O you were doing something, you were saving the world, the same with ME1 and ME2 you had a big mission. Hawke is only important because the seeker needs him, so the story is there but you don't get to know it. Sure you get promissed something big is coming all the time, but you have no idea what it is and after a while it's like reading a book with a wandering plot and no clear idea of what the hell the hero is doing.
Thanks guys i was planning to buy this game but when i saw you comments its a let down now. I'll just gonna download it rather buying it.
You don't really want to announce stuff like that openly m8, with that said you could do what i do, Download and use that as the demo, that way you get to experience the full game features in order to see if you liek a game or not, 75% of those i've downloaded i've bought so i could register and get any extras the devs bring out. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 were 2 such games for me, now i'm a solid member of the BioWare community and from the impressions of owning and playign the first 2 i'll buy ME3 outright instead of getting a "demo".
DA2 just from the official demo has me tempted but it depends really as there are too many games this year i want. ME3, Witcher 2, BF3, SW:TOR. my wallet is gonna be crying by Christmas lol
As said before, Dragon Age 2 is very diferent from DA:O. Actually, it looks, and works a lot more like Mass Effect 2. If this is for the better or the worse are a choice for the individual player to make. Although for me it is the worse, it seems like Bioware is moving away from the RPG and going more into the action genre to satisfy console gamers.( Note removing, overly simplify, and a lillte button mashing at least, is NOT evolving the RPG genre). The adding of a lot of cinematics, wich they themselves have released data of, is not making a game better, it is trying to turn the game more and more into a movie. And if i would want a movie i would watch one, seriously. The voice of the charaters are also a big minus they just feel without true emotion and seem out of place in the world.
It was composed by someone with a personal connection to the first game, he absolutely loved the first so he was in the same mindset as we all would be, as opposed to the other places that just seen it as another game in need of a score.
Then there is feedback if you still need more info:
As said before, Dragon Age 2 is very diferent from DA:O. Actually, it looks, and works a lot more like Mass Effect 2. If this is for the better or the worse are a choice for the individual player to make. Although for me it is the worse, it seems like Bioware is moving away from the RPG and going more into the action genre to satisfy console gamers.( Note removing, overly simplify, and a lillte button mashing at least, is NOT evolving the RPG genre). The adding of a lot of cinematics, wich they themselves have released data of, is not making a game better, it is trying to turn the game more and more into a movie. And if i would want a movie i would watch one, seriously. The voice of the charaters are also a big minus they just feel without true emotion and seem out of place in the world.
If it plays like Mass Effect than COUNT ME IN!!!! MAss effect is one of the best games I have ever ever played. Not even Baldur's Gate was so kewl ;D
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
If Mass effect had no plot what so ever then yes it kind of plays like that, except without the fun of mass effect. Remember mass effect is a shooter with cover, this is more like dynasty warriors with interactive cut scenes. Gone are the complex dialog choices from the first game. There are no, stealing, cunning, and so on in the dialog wheel. You have appeasing choice, snarky choice, and aggressive choice. Followed by good, nuteral, and evil. That is it.
By act three Hawke has seen so much bad crap happen to him you expect to open the next scene with him hanging himself, and a big game over flashing under the corpse.
From what I've read and watched the combat and storyline are best but I've also read that a person can finish DA2 in 16hrs or so. I don't want to be paying for a game with only 16hours of game play DLC pack should be coming out soon 5mb DLC for 10.00.
I'm not too far in, and the game definitely has its moments. I'm willing to give the idea that this is Hawke's own story, not your personal Warden's (and thus many choices are taken from you) and see how it plays out. So far it hasn't been that bad though I still have to say I've liked DAO much more.
So I guess... the game on its own is actually pretty decent. I truely don't consider this one a true sequel, though (my opinion, not saying it's any kind of fact or statement).
The three things that are slowly eating away at me, though, is:
1) Stuck uniforms for your teammages (really irks me, but not too big of an issue by itself).
2.) The fact that they absolutely seem to love spawning waves of enemies right on top of you in most battles, which in my opinion is one of the lamest ways of adding difficulty. I understand it when its due to technical limitations, but in this way it's just incredibly... well, just weak.
3.) This one is by far the most enjoyment sucking for me: Nightmare's Elite or higher mobs just using YOUR Health pots whenever they damn well please. Now, I'm HOPING this is only a temporary thing with the Assassin's when helping Aveline (as I said, I'm not too far in), but if it's not, I'm just going to grow to hate this game.
I'd drop down to Hard, but I find the game too easy at that point and boredom starts kicking in (that and the lack of Friendly Fire is a major bummer for me).
It becomes GOTY only becouse of all follow blindly bioware even when its totally crap and DA2 is crap so if this game is game of year i seriously doub that,
Comments
I'm starting to think that 1.5 years is just too short to produce a fully fledged, fully featured RPG game of high quality.
Some things got to give, apparently.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Well, I just got the game and I'm sure, like many others, they won't be able to tell how your DA:O saves actually affect the game.
it seems you have 3 choices of background (if I'm remember correctly) , one of them being the standard "hero of ferelden". Then there is another choice where you can load a save game from DA:O.
They indicate that your choices will somehow affect or be noted in this second installment.
As far as performance, I have a higher end machine and I have not had any issues yet.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Like I said I'm into act two, and all I've noticed about my actions in DA:O is random bar talk from npc's in the hanged man. The game itself doesn't do much at all toward the effects of DA:O on the world as a whole other than camios from Bodhan, and some talk from Anders. Oh and a few letters from home, which really annoy me because I was expecting something more than a letter and a drunk, who actually seemed to be insulting my warden.
Sadly I think you are right. I probably wouldn't have so many problems with the game. If they had just called it something else. Like Dragon Age: Champion of Kirkwall, and reserved the name Dragon Age 2 for something that was closer to Origins.
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
At the end of the day m8 your well within your rights to hodl off before buyign the game (if at all) but from what you've put here i'd suggest getting a new system for playing more recent game and future releases.
You won't be able to customize characters....in DA2 you are playing a SPECIFIC character, not one you make up. So you can be a guy champion or a girl champion, that is it. This is COMPLETELY different than DA Origins. Not saying its bad, just a completely different take on it.
That's wrong, there is character customization available after the first scene where Varric exaggerates things (basically the tutorial), the customization tool is basically the same thing as DAO's one, with different hairstyles.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
You can customize characters, it was just disabled in the demo.
Now I have only played the demo, but it's true that you can't be an Elf or a Dwarf, but it's not that different I think. Ponder this - You spent a half hour to a few hours on your Origins story, and then you go to Ostegar, and it's the same from there. You're a Grey Warden, and that's it. You are a specific character, regardless on how you respond on it. People act like you could just decide not to be a Warden, and have a sex change to a Darkspawn and join a punk band in Orlais. It was not like that, at all.
Instead of the shallow Origins Stories, you have a main character who talks. I think that makes up for the lack of Elves and Dwarfs.
I am doing my third playthrough through DA Origins right now, and the more I play the less I like it. First playthrough was awesome, but this game has already aged poorly. The art is terrible, a lot of the story is childish, and the whole ordeal about fighting Darkspawn is uninteresting. The occasional awesome moments pop up like a funny remark from Stern or Alistair, or "Enchantment? Enchantment!" but the game is unpolished, and feels like playing a MMO by yourself.
At this point Mass Effect series is a much better product. It's streamlined and they got the continuity right. The changes they made to ME2 was awesome. DA2 looks completely different. A much more cool art style, hopefully a better story and better characters!?, but it doesnt feel like it belongs with DA1. The Darkspawn does not look like themselves either. It's like a alternative reality Dragon Age.
I also finished Awakening and there were some serious stuff wrong with that expansion. The whole thing about the dwarf dude(Ohgren) not remembering you was stupid. they did not execute all the choices you did in the original, and that was really really lame as it was supposed to be the major selling point of this new franchise.
A lot of us Bioware fans had hoped that Mass Effect and Dragon Age would be staple franchises like what Starcraft and Warcraft is for Blizzard, but right now I feel that Dragon Age might not deserve to bear the mantle of a great franchise.
But then again... Assassins Creed 2 showed us that a sequel can give redemption to an IP. I think everyone is speculating if The Witcher 2 is where it will be at!? That game has insane graphics.
Not really no, the art style while better make the darkspawn look like bad anime monsters. The romance plot in the game is rather stilted because any sex can do anyone. So you kind of feel like your whole party is a bit easy in the bed. The frame narrative story telling quickly makes you start feeling left out of the loop. Which to me was just wrong.
Is it really streamlined, maybe yes maybe no. The old DA:O play style had you learning skills, tallents, and leveling stats. This game is all about stats, they litterally do everything. Picking locks for a rogue, up your cunning stat, need fortitude to shrug off stuns up your strength. Want to resist magic as a warrior, then up your magic stat, which has no other use for a warrior than that.
Yes the talking between characters is still there, and yes it still feels like playing an MMO by yourself. Except where DA:O felt like say EQ or WoW DA2 feels like DDO. Your always in the same city, and you pop outside just for quests. And you pop out into the same maps you have seen dozens of times. While the frame narrative breaks make you want to know what the heck he has been doing with his free time.
One year and all the guy has to show for it is a breast plate and a sword, no experience what so ever and very little coin. The next break covers three years, and we come back to him having some social standing and a new house. Yet exactly the same ammount of coin and the same equipment he had when we left. At the same time you run into people Hawke met in those years we missed out on, and all they say is it was nice working with you when you were doing X. No more than that, like it is teasing you with the fact there is more story there but you can't know it.
I understand why they did it that way, Varric is telling his own story and he is hitting the points he cares about and nothing else. It's why the prolog is so short and act 1 is fairly long. Varric enters the story in act one, and a good bit of the cut scenes seem to revolve around him. He has tons of quips and even adds in "Hawke said diplomaticly" and "Hawke muttered in an angry aside to the dwarf." Behind things Hawke says from time to time. Without the side characters you kind of feel like Hawke has no life, and is rather aimless. Act 1 is all about getting money to not be poor, act 2 is garnering social standing.
DA:O you were doing something, you were saving the world, the same with ME1 and ME2 you had a big mission. Hawke is only important because the seeker needs him, so the story is there but you don't get to know it. Sure you get promissed something big is coming all the time, but you have no idea what it is and after a while it's like reading a book with a wandering plot and no clear idea of what the hell the hero is doing.
Thanks guys i was planning to buy this game but when i saw you comments its a let down now. I'll just gonna download it rather buying it.
You don't really want to announce stuff like that openly m8, with that said you could do what i do, Download and use that as the demo, that way you get to experience the full game features in order to see if you liek a game or not, 75% of those i've downloaded i've bought so i could register and get any extras the devs bring out. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 were 2 such games for me, now i'm a solid member of the BioWare community and from the impressions of owning and playign the first 2 i'll buy ME3 outright instead of getting a "demo".
DA2 just from the official demo has me tempted but it depends really as there are too many games this year i want. ME3, Witcher 2, BF3, SW:TOR. my wallet is gonna be crying by Christmas lol
As said before, Dragon Age 2 is very diferent from DA:O. Actually, it looks, and works a lot more like Mass Effect 2. If this is for the better or the worse are a choice for the individual player to make. Although for me it is the worse, it seems like Bioware is moving away from the RPG and going more into the action genre to satisfy console gamers.( Note removing, overly simplify, and a lillte button mashing at least, is NOT evolving the RPG genre). The adding of a lot of cinematics, wich they themselves have released data of, is not making a game better, it is trying to turn the game more and more into a movie. And if i would want a movie i would watch one, seriously. The voice of the charaters are also a big minus they just feel without true emotion and seem out of place in the world.
This is one time I can say to actually goto G4 for the real review (can't say that very often lol):
http://www.g4tv.com/games/xbox-360/64227/dragon-age-ii/review/
It was composed by someone with a personal connection to the first game, he absolutely loved the first so he was in the same mindset as we all would be, as opposed to the other places that just seen it as another game in need of a score.
Then there is feedback if you still need more info:
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/710938/Feedback----Where-Did-Dragon-Age-2-Go-Wrong-and-What-Did-We-Love-From-GDC-2011.html
Pretty much just an open discussion, the DA2 part isn't until atleast half way through.
If it plays like Mass Effect than COUNT ME IN!!!! MAss effect is one of the best games I have ever ever played. Not even Baldur's Gate was so kewl ;D
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
If Mass effect had no plot what so ever then yes it kind of plays like that, except without the fun of mass effect. Remember mass effect is a shooter with cover, this is more like dynasty warriors with interactive cut scenes. Gone are the complex dialog choices from the first game. There are no, stealing, cunning, and so on in the dialog wheel. You have appeasing choice, snarky choice, and aggressive choice. Followed by good, nuteral, and evil. That is it.
By act three Hawke has seen so much bad crap happen to him you expect to open the next scene with him hanging himself, and a big game over flashing under the corpse.
Dragon age 2 is such a step backwards compared to the first one!
"Negaholics are people who become addicted to negativity and self-doubt, they find fault in most things and never seem to be satisfied."
^MMORPG.com
From what I've read and watched the combat and storyline are best but I've also read that a person can finish DA2 in 16hrs or so. I don't want to be paying for a game with only 16hours of game play DLC pack should be coming out soon 5mb DLC for 10.00.
I'm not too far in, and the game definitely has its moments. I'm willing to give the idea that this is Hawke's own story, not your personal Warden's (and thus many choices are taken from you) and see how it plays out. So far it hasn't been that bad though I still have to say I've liked DAO much more.
So I guess... the game on its own is actually pretty decent. I truely don't consider this one a true sequel, though (my opinion, not saying it's any kind of fact or statement).
The three things that are slowly eating away at me, though, is:
1) Stuck uniforms for your teammages (really irks me, but not too big of an issue by itself).
2.) The fact that they absolutely seem to love spawning waves of enemies right on top of you in most battles, which in my opinion is one of the lamest ways of adding difficulty. I understand it when its due to technical limitations, but in this way it's just incredibly... well, just weak.
3.) This one is by far the most enjoyment sucking for me: Nightmare's Elite or higher mobs just using YOUR Health pots whenever they damn well please. Now, I'm HOPING this is only a temporary thing with the Assassin's when helping Aveline (as I said, I'm not too far in), but if it's not, I'm just going to grow to hate this game.
I'd drop down to Hard, but I find the game too easy at that point and boredom starts kicking in (that and the lack of Friendly Fire is a major bummer for me).
True.