DRAGON AGE ][

get hype!

http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/home/

1.
When will Dragon Age 2 be released?

Dragon Age 2 is set for release in North America on March 8 and March 11 in Europe.

2.
Which systems is Dragon Age 2 being released on? Will they be released at the same time?

Dragon Age 2 is being released simultaneously for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

3.
Do I have to play Dragon Age: Origins before playing Dragon Age 2?

You do not have to play Dragon Age: Origins to fully experience Dragon Age 2. It is a perfect starting point to enter the series.

4.
Will I meet romanceable characters?

Yes. You will be able to engage in romances with certain NPCs in your party and throughout the world.

5.
Where does Dragon Age 2 take place?

Dragon Age 2 is set in the Free Marches, with much of the plot focused on the city of Kirkwall, an ancient port city that was once the center of the global slave trade.

6.
When does Dragon Age 2 take place?

Dragon Age 2 takes place sometime after the Blight of Ferelden, as the Darkspawn and other threats emerge to endanger the world again. The story unfolds over the course of a decade as you rise to power and change the world.

7.
Will I meet familiar characters in Dragon Age 2?

Dragon Age 2 is set in the same world as Dragon Age: Origins, and you will cross paths with many of the same individuals and groups that you encountered before.

8.
Will the Dragon Age 2 story react to the decisions I made in Dragon Age: Origins?

Yes. If you import your Origins playthroughs, you will experience the consequences of the choices you made previously. However, this is not necessary to fully experience Dragon Age 2.

9.
What will my character be like?

Your character in Dragon Age 2 will be a legendary figure in the history of Thedas. Not only will you hear people respond to your conversations, but your character will also be be fully-voiced. You will play as a human male or female of any class you wish: Warrior, Mage or Rogue.

10.
Will there be new spells and abilities in Dragon Age 2?

Yes. We'll reveal more details over time, but there will be many spells, abilities and specializations to choose from and customize your character to your liking.

11.
What is the story like?

The Dragon Age 2 story will be a non-linear framed narrative. You will have unprecedented control over the directions your character goes and the sequence in which the story unfolds.

12.
What is combat like?

Dragon Age 2 will feature reactive combat, allowing you to take real-time control of your character in melee, ranged or spell combat. You can pause the game to assign tactical actions to each party member, or take direct control of any individual character while the customizable tactical AI directs the others.

6, 7, 8 most interesting to me

hopefully the textures dont look like total shit in this version. I loved dragon age with the fire of 1000 suns but goddamn it was ugly.

yeah, the actually in-game rendered character models looks JUSSSST a lil' different from the promo rendered images

e.g.

http://misterrandom.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Leliana-Song-500x331.png

Man, the nerds are just straight fuckin furious about this game

Like anyone on the Eurogamer comment threads who says "I'm actually enjoying this so far" literally gets a billion negative feedback within ten seconds of posting it

what is their beef with the game? i noticed on metacritic it was reviewing well but being ripped apart by the kids. i have an email from gamestop telling me i preordered this, altho i have no recollection of doing so, so i have $5 riding on this.

I think principally a) it's not an RPG because you can play it by pressing a button each time you want to attack and b) most of it happens in the same city over several years so there's a lot of blandly familiar scenery and not so much sense of adventure

the monsters. how dare they

I played the demo and thought it was quite good and it made go back to finish DA:O, so interested to see if any people who aren't mental have got a hate-on for it

pc gamer (u.s.) called it the best rpg of the decade, and said that it has 'the best RPG combat ever' - which is great because it's just a knockoff of the witcher's combat system from what i can tell

also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPUvRl97DTw

Only 6/10 from Edge though - apparently there's a slow 25 hour build up to a big epic quest in a location outside the city...which is then over in no time, after which you spend another 25 hours back in that same city. Doesn't sound much fun.

sounds similar to bg2, where it felt like the meat of the game's questing took place w/i the city of baldur's gate

lol i forgot all about this game.

interesting reception so far

i still haven't played the first one, can't really muster up the interest

and yeah the romances in these games are always a little, i dunno, like they weren't really in the game to begin with but written by fanfiction people afterwards and then stuck back in.

xp eh it's ok, some parts better than others.

the best aspect of it is that the stories of the locations/major quest lines and the stories of your companions are written to be interlinked from the start. like each of your peeps are from these spots or part of these organizations. makes it seem like something is at stake.

not real thrilled to see that anders character in there, he was one of the annoying ones from the expansion. eh.

I like the game but I can see how some people are pissed about it. One of the most egregious/lazy things they do is recycle maps over and over. Caves in different locations on the map are almost identical or they will 'change' them up by closing a door off of a portion of the map. That kind of stuff..

this...isn't very good. it doesn't really do anything appreciably better than DA:O and it certainly does some things worse. also, i came to the realization that the world they have created for these games is just remarkably uninteresting, which is a cardinal crime for an rpg. i think that, in the first game, the fact that you were part of the narrative of momentous events for that world maybe papered over that. and ironically, one of the only things i like about DA2 is that, so far at least, the story resists the typical rpg/fantasy reliance on an overblown cataclysmic plot. like a saturday afternoon at the ricoh arena, i am enjoying myself - i think - but it's hard not to be constantly aware that what i'm witnessing is actually pretty terrible.

ha i was looking @ this on the steam like an hour ago feeling bored & uncertain but i couldnt pull the trigger

I started the first one a few weeks ago & haven't been able to get into it (my main char's at level 7 or so, so I'm quite a few hours in). The world is dreary...well, you don't really see the world, but just these big city set-pieces, which are just dumpy. I get that the middle ages were dumpy! But come on: if I wanted realism... And you don't even get to explore the world, or even the cities really, which is disconcerting for a first-person game. Maybe I shouldn't have played as a fighter since all he can do is bash, and the new weapons/armor I've been getting just do that better---they don't confer other cool abilities (I like to play as warriors who gain magic through equip). So I dunno if I'm gonna stick with it. I'm enjoyed FF I on my iPod a helluva more than this right now.

I didn't play Origins so I have no idea of how II compares, but so far I'm enjoying this. I tried playing the demo with a mouse and keyboard and found it impossible, but the 360 controls are much better suited to the hack and slash gameplay I'm more comfortable with.

Euler, switch to a mage. Trust me. (The arcane warrior spec seems to be what you want.)

I played this game for a dozen-odd hours, then gave up on it completely. A big disappointment.

(actually I have no idea if arcane warrior is a DA2 spec, I just know it's in DA1)

bioware have been locked in their offices for the past ten years, forced to look on in horror as bad games assembled themselves out of spare code and deviantart character concepts and marched themselves out the doors like the hell brooms from fantasia

lol

yeah I should restart this game I think; tried again last week (but didn't see the revive with DJP's advice) but didn't last an hour before I got bored.

I think part of my drag is that I played as a dwarf & I found the dwarf environs pretty dreary, & the character (I picked the "elite" story) pretty unlikeable.

also my tv is ass (19" CRT from back in the day) but I'm thinking I'm gonna do something about that.

I'm still playing this game. It's really fun, I think. I'm excited that everyone thinks Origins is better because that means I get to play an even better game after I'm done with this one.

I am really bad at the managing my team in combat situations. I had a single fight that took me over two hours to finish because I was micromanaging the situation so slowly. My left hand was cramping up from all the left triggering.

For awhile I was going to try to sleep with everyone on my team but so far only the pirate chick.

have ordered a mondo hdtv & looking to restarting Origins once I get it set up & find some time next, er, century

"All That Remains" was seriously fucked up.