Yesterday (Sunday) GameStop called me up to tell me I could pick up my copy of Dragon Age 2 Monday night at midnight, but, that I should get there early, as early as 10 P.M.. I'm guessing GameStop is having a release party and maybe even giving away some free swag (possibly DA2 shirts or something). I'm going to call them this afternoon and ask them if I should really be there a whole two hours early. If they're not going to put it in my hands until 12 A.M. I'm not going to be there two hours early. For one I'm way too sick to be able to stand there for that length of time. I wouldn't want to sit there for that long either as I'd still be in pain either way. I'll probably show up around 11:30 or so. If they're giving away free stuff that probably means I'll miss out on it, but, I'm just happy to get the game.
Who all has played the demo? I've played through it twice now on a lap-top I can use from in bed. I've played through it as a mage and a warrior. Depending on how I feel I may give it a run through as a rogue some time today. Honestly, I'm liking the feel of the game (demo) minus a couple small annoyances.
1. Even on the PC version, unless it's in the full version and wasn't in the demo, they got rid of the Isometric over-head view. That kind of pisses me off. I've read two separate previews and one says the iso view is in and another says it's gone, so, I guess I'll find out tonight.
2. I'm not sure I like the conversation "wheel". I preferred the method of conversation from DA:O. I may be in the minority there, but, I feel this wheel thing is just an excuse to use a short-cut. It only gives you the "gist" of what the actual reply is anyway and doesn't list what your character will say word for word. It does how-ever give you a little picture representing the emotion that will be conveyed in the reply you give (good, neutral, evil).
Aside from those two things I didn't see anything else in the demo I didn't like. I was honestly afraid that by speeding up the combat like they did that they would have gotten rid of the tactical feeling that DA:O's combat had. Fortunately the tactical feeling is alive and intact despite the more action oriented combat. If you haven't played the demo because of the fear that the sped up combat has taken away the tactics, have no fear, it's still there.
Most of the sites that have given previews say the graphics are much improved over the first game, but honestly, aside from some better animations (which really doesn't count as "graphics" if you ask me) it looks pretty much the same except with a slightly different style to parts of the games over-all look. The graphics are good, just as good as the first game and the newer look does indeed look good as well, but I'm not seeing a huge improvement in the graphics that some of the sites are raving about.
The voice work in the demo is great and I can't complain there. The UI is basically non-existent how-ever. At the bottom of the screen where your skills are displayed there's not even a box to outline them. There's a slightly grayed area where your skills are listed side by side in what-ever order you'd like to list them. You can arrange them in which-ever order you'd like.
So, originally I had my doubts that by changing the combat the game wouldn't feel like Dragon Age, but that's not a worry anymore. The only real important draw back to me has been the lack of a pulled back iso view. Needless to say for the most part I'm greatly looking forward to getting the game tonight. If you haven't pre-ordered the game and you liked the first one, get your ass to the store and lay down the money. If you don't you're missing out!!!
Seemed like a huge improvement in graphics to me...and the DX11 stuff wasn't even enabled. I can't wait to see it with the high res tex pack.
http://blog.bioware.com/2011/03/03/the-technology-of-dragon-age-ii-–-part-2/
The screens in your link there Do look like a decent improvement. I just didn't notice a difference in the demo. Mostly likely, because as you already pointed out, there was no DX11 or high res textures in the demo version. From a standard model and texture perspective, to me at least, the graphics looked pretty much the same (excluding the new animations of course). I imagine once I get my hands on the full game with all the bells and whistles enabled I'll be able to see an improvement.
I'm not saying DA1 was ugly, it just seemed like old tech. Some of the areas background textures seemed a little off...like they could've done better.
Still, with the amount of textures in these games I suppose its inevitable there'll be something to complain about. Since DA2 supposedly went with a more stylized look maybe some people are more sensitive to that.
Yea, I asked the Gamestop guys about it, and I had to say, "Midnight? I'm too old to stay up that late, then I got to work in the morning...being an adult sucks."
Raven, I agree with both #1 and #2 in the OP, but I'll add one more thing I didn't like: the combat control scheme. Having locked camera that follows your character, combined with the same one-click RMB to move and attack is bad. Accidentally right clicking on empty ground when a creature moves out of the way can cause your whole camera to spin around and then you have to figure out where the heck everyone went to try and go back to the fight. Also, the demo visuals did not impress me at all. The "fire" effects in the demo looked like utter crap compared to DA:O. Will have to judge on the full game, though, after going through the config ini because the ingame options are terribly incomplete.
Ya I have to agree with you, I will miss the old camera from DAO. I'm not too bugged about the wheel but, I did like to knowing what exactly I was going to say.
I don't like how the darkspawn look... well the swordsmen, archers and ogres ie their faces... Also I don't like how in some environments or the backrounds are very empty. In the demo if you look out in the wastelands there aint much too see... These are just minor things to me though...
Oh ya you suck Raven... I got class at 830am but Im already loaded and ready to unlock in the morning.
I got work But I'm on call today and if it gets bad overnight (which is very rare, but possible), then I'd have an excuse to stay home tomorrow
I got mine preloaded on Steam already. (I know, traitor! hah. But I intend to reinstall Windows again shortly and it annoys me to have to fix everything if I didn't buy it from Steam. )
Why not Impulse? Savyg is a traior! Burn Savyg at the stake!
Actually, I am really asking, I use Gamers Gate, Impulse, and Steam. I'm a techtard, so I really don't knwo the advantaes of using steam.
All you need on a fresh install (which I assume most people don't do all that often) is to load up the Steam client. It installs itself. Then the game which Steam is already aware of. It installs the game and launches.
In Impulse, you have to download the installer, install Impulse, tell it to Detect Application for each game, sometimes download hundreds of megs while it backtracks to version 1.0 just so it can patch back up to the current version (or Ubisofts launcher can or whatever)...it's frustrating (more so if you have a lot of games to install.) Sometimes Detect Application won't even work properly unless you piss around in the registry.
I prefer Beamdog, which doesn't keep the DirectX installer or other garbage on your hard drive post-install. But no major publishers are on that so I gave up on that.
Personally I didn't like Dragon Age 1 very much. Compared to most of other RPGs what came out recently it was better but I am still waiting to play RPG games as good as BG1&2 and PS:T or F1&2.
This game will be even worse.
It sounds like the UI may have been pushed to a Mass Effect 2 style - Minimalized with skills perhaps appearing with a menu that you can get to when you pause the game with a hotkey?
I wasn't even thinking about it coming out. I haven't even bought it. I was a Dragon Age Collector Edition purchaser, but i didn't buy Awakening or anything beyond that first one. The game was decent and I didn't trust the DLC's. But then when Witch Hunt came out, I couldn't help myself because I thought it'd answer those questions.
I'll never trust a Bioware DLC again until after I've waited for reviews. Even then, with the rave reviews Overlord got on Mass Effect 2 I think I'll still pass.
So I'll be waiting for reviews and gameplay footage to pop up on Youtube before I get this one.
Impulse isn't selling outside North America it appears. Same for some other EA titles.
The UI is a big step backwards. The skills are always there, you don't need to pause to view them, but graphically it's vastly inferior. For DA:O, the little DLCs were definitely underwhelming, but Awakening was amazing - a proper expansion. A little short, but a very epic journey to continue your character from DA:O.
I think DA2 will be a decent a game, I don't expect it to be bad. I do expect that when I'm done with it, I'll say that I enjoyed DA:O more overall.
One of the best things about DA:O was the charater creation options. Sucks that they have removed being able to play multiple backgrounds and races.
BRAD!!!! Please when you guys make the Elemental RPG, don't take away options in exchange for voice acting.
Meanwhile, I'm playing Mark Leung while I wait
Weird game.
http://social.bioware.com/page/da2-patches
High res texture pack (mostly for DX11 users.)
Unknown if Steam will start including it or not, but obviously not in the preload.
I was getting worried that the DA2 preload is a only a bit more than half than DA:O (5gb down from 9). At least this texture pack will bring it up to a respectable amount Good find, thanks! I'll have to download it at home tonight so I don't waste time tomorrow instead of playing.
Even though I don't have a DX11 card, should still see an improvement I imagine.
They said the difference is minor for DX10 users. But anyway, now you have a reason to get a DX11 card
Not really.. I've got a pair of GTX 285s in SLI and there's not been a single game that even forced me to turn SLI on Will see how it looks, I'm more concerned about the particle effects (spells) than textures atm. The demo's fire effects were rather lacking when compared to DA:O
Agreed. Definitely agreed about the new Darkspawn look as well. To me it feels like they took the Darkspawn, which are only supposed to be out in force during a blight, and turned them into generic "Orc" type monsters. Now, I understand that the beginning of the game (the part you play through in the demo) is actually taking place at the same time as the events in DA:O. Flemeth comes to your rescue while on her way to help the Warden from DA:O escape the top of the tower where you light the beacon. That could explain why there are so many Darkspawn at that point. If they're around en mass later in the game though it will seem out of place to me.
Why wait until tomorrow to unlock? You should be able to unlock tonight at midnight. I do understand the need for sleep though so I guess I'll let you off with that excuse....this time.
I completely agree. Switching from one character to another jumps the camera around which is pretty damn annoying and I can see how that can be disconcerning or even flat out confusing in a large battle where your party is spread out. I read that the reason they didn't put in the iso cam was because of the environments. In DA:O every environment had to be "sliced off" at the top to achieve the iso view. They said that was limiting what they could do with the environments so they ditched it in favor of the standard console view to be able to make better looking environments. Well, I'm calling Bull Sh!t on that excuse. I think they really did it so that the console people wouldn't complain that the PC version was so much "better" this time around. They could have easily enabled the iso cam and restricted it from hitting the ceiling or made the top of the environments "see-through". Hopefully we'll be able to change the camera distances in a ".ini" file somewhere. If not then maybe it would be helpful to start a massive request thread on the official forums asking for the iso cam to be enabled in a patch (not that I think they'd listen honestly).
The reason they gave for adding the conversation wheel was supposedly they had too many complaints that having to do all that reading in DA:O sucked the player out of the game and ruined immersion....WTF!?!?! Who ever had that complaint is a f'kin moron. If anything, having to read the replies sucked the player into the game and storyline MORE and HELPED with immersion, not detracted from it.
On a side note, from a learning perspective, the whole reason I scored a college level reading skill while I was in Middle School was from reading all the text in games like "Dragon Warrior" and "Ultima Exodus". Kids today are stupid and lazy and it's really starting to show in trends in pop culture.
When it comes to those two things I fear "consolization" has indeed taken it's toll on that part of the game. That's just my opinion though. At least the tactical feeling is still there in the battles.
Tydorius, if you liked DA:O at all, and if you liked ME2 at all, I think you'll greatly enjoy DA2. There's plenty of game-play footage out there already on a bunch of different sites. Some of the gaming sites have "exclusive footage" as well that you can't find on YouTube. Look around and you should be able to find plenty. I hope that helps in your decision my friend. Also, I agree with you assessment of the DLC's. Awakening was great, a full on expansion, but the other DLC's were kind of a let down.
Thanks for the heads up there, Savyg. It's now downloaded and waiting for the install of the full game when I get home tonight . Good looking out bro.
I wouldn't be too sure on that. I'd guess that if you can at least do DX10 you "should" see some improvement. With just DX9 though I'm not sure the high res textures will show up or not nor if you'll be able to enable them. Notice the page on that link with the download says:
Requirements:Using high-resolution textures requires a graphics card with at least 1024MB video memory.Most of the benefits from the Hi-resolution textures will only be seen if you are able to run the game in DirectX 11.
If you meet the memory requirement you should see some kind of improvement I would think. I'm not %100 sure though. I guess we'll find out tonight.
I know I love MLAA, I'm sure Nvidias upcoming counter to it will look awesome too. As to spells the tech blog post has a lot more info
I have my Signature Edition fully pre-loaded on Impulse, but it looks like console players have been screwed over.
I think this going to get pretty ugly once the news spreads. Plus it makes me wonder what else we have not been told.
The Known Issues section of the readme ( in Dragon Age 2\docs) does not help.
This makes me very glad I decided to invest in that 560 Ti with some of our income tax money. Sadly as long as I'm playing on this lap-top from in bed I won't be able to use it... . At least what little bit of playing I can do while I can sit up at the desktop will look awesome though
I know I'll probably catch some flack for this reply, but...
This is exactly why I think certain games don't have any place being on consoles at all (not just this little file snafu but bigger problems in the "big picture" of the industry). Companies and Devs need to Re-Learn why it is PC Gaming was what it was back in the day and why console gaming was what it is. Some games shine on PC. Some games shine on consoles. Porting games over to all platforms isn't good for the players and one would think it wouldn't be good for the gaming companies either.
Of course this will just lead to further dumbing down of once great PC only titles. Certain games though have proven there is still a massive market for PC Only titles like Starcraft. Some titles (more if you ask me) need to be PC Exclusive so that the companies and gamers both can see why PC Gaming was once for the elite of gamers and gaming.
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