Some positive highlights: - At least three playable races (female/male of humans/dwarves/elves). They're considering Qunari. (No pre-set name, fully voiced) - Instead of just your characters growing, you also grow your inquisition army through lots of various methods ranging from doing favors, blackmail, finding ancient lore, getting ancient relics, obtaining secrets, making connections, etc, etc. An example of how this helps you is that say a castle turns you away. If you only have a few people, you might just be turned away. However, if your inquisition is an army, you can just siege the castle to get inside.
- Wants to make the action less frantic and more deliberate, returning to more tactics-oriented approach to encounters. Big return to party-based tactics - Monsters, and dragons for example, do not level up with you. Some are vastly more powerful, forcing you to come back later with proper experience - You won’t regularly see waves of new bad guys appearing out of nowhere to extend encounters - Enemy scenario: Fighting a massive, armored dragon, you can target a leg, send warrior into melee range to bash off armor, rogue can sneak up and poison the exposed limb, dragon stumbles around allowing others to unleash spells etc
- “Trying to drive exploration- something that frankly, Bioware hasn’t done in a while.” “In a way like Baldur’s Gate, areas that existed in part just to spaces that you went to, but they had a story of their own.” (Origins didn't even have that) - Structural style like Dragon Age: Origins - Working hard to make large areas interesting; slopes, rocks, elevations and your character has tailored animations for overcoming each. Ease of movement key. (I take this to mean that you can no longer be blocked by a small fence, instead you can just climb over it)
- Dialogue/story sequences are the best way to learn about your allies and their abilities - Writers analyze the story’s main themes and conflicts, then create certain characters around them - Not all characters are created so that you’ll like them - BioWare working on the issue of bringing over previous choices in Inquisition (yeah, good luck with that)
I've gone from bitterly pessimistic to cautiously optimistic (which is really the best it'll get). At the very least, it looks like they're *trying* to do it right this time so let's hope for the best.
Here's my problem with the whole "waaah, all the NPCs are bisexual" argument: it's a reaction to something that has absolutely no effect on your game. Unless you're looking it up on Youtube, or playing the game enough times to romance every single party member twice (once for each gender), you're never in a situation where the entire party is trying to dogpile you. You wouldn't even know about it, absent any outside sources of knowledge. And it's not like you can "accidentally" sleep with everybody - hell, you can't even complete one romance without activating a deliberate trigger that is entirely within the player's control. (And really, if you're going around clicking the big glowing heart with every single party member, that's on you, isn't it?)
As for the argument that it "breaks RP" - nonsense. Because when you create a character for a game you've never played before, you don't necessarily know in advance which NPCs you'll prefer, which characters will be more compatible with the type of personality you've given your protagonist. My first time through DA:O, I imagined a male protagonist that turned out to be very similar to Morrigan, and it made sense to me that they'd end up together; if I'd chosen a female hero, I would have still felt that way about the characters but romance would be impossible.
So while DA2 has its flaws, the lack of gender restrictions on romance isn't one of them. It's a component that allows you further freedom to shape your character's story - my sarcastic, amoral female mage turned out to be a better match for Isabela than Anders or Fenris, and I just let it happen rather than check Youtube or Wikipedia in advance to know which characters would be available to her.
@shawne: And of course you have to bring up that argument again. *facepalm* Do you really want to see pages and pages about sexuality of characters again? I've long since stopped bothering with it. It's one of those never-ending debates such as the current subjects debated in the Human Rights and to be vegan or not topics right now. Thanks for bringing it up, really.
@Kitteh_On_A_Cloud: I'm responding to comments made on this thread. If you don't have any on-topic contributions to make, feel free to click the little X on the top corner of your screen.
@Shawne What Kitteh was trying to say was that that particular topic of discussion was already a few pages ago and also got quite passionate and unfriendly, as discussions about the topic of sexuality usually go. General message was "do we really need to bring that up again?".
If you believe so, nobody's going to stop you, but it's not unwise to think "does this really need to be discussed more than it already has".
@Drugar: In this specific case, though, the topic was brought up in direct relation to the OP's question - "Will you buy DA3? No, because of DA2's romances." I'm not interested in having a discussion on sexuality in general, I just don't agree that it's a valid point of criticism against BioWare and DA3.
Will wait and see. I was a bit of a fan of some of Bioware's games. I enjoyed the Baldur's Gate series as well as the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series. Baldur's Gate has long since gone from their hands and I wasn't satisfied with the last iteration of either Mass Effect or Dragon Age.
I'm more hopeful of the next Dragon Age game producing something that may appeal to me, but I'm not pre-ordering (regardless of exclusive incentives to do so) and I will wait for reviews before I decide though. DA2 was a poor game, especially off the back of Origins imo. Mass Effect on the other hand I have no interest in. It was the stronger game to DA2, all things considered, but I'm a lot less hopeful that series will be something I will enjoy following and investing in personally.
@shawne: @Drugar worded exactly what I was trying to say. I just am fed up with discussions involving the defending/argumenting for the romances in DA 2. We've had that discussion before and we can conclude that people just have to agree to disagree on that subject because of their own personal preferences. I indeed was annoyed when writing down my previous comment, knowing my experience with such topics on the Bioware Social Network, where such topics only lead to personal insults, flaming and derailing in the end. At least I was honest about it. And my comment was still on-topic. Or did you read something about me talking about flying hippo's in my previous comment? Can't remember I did. And for the record, only I will decide when to click the little 'X' button in the right top corner of my screen, thanks.
Dragon Age was good in my opinion, Awakening was a huge deception and Dragon Age II was even worse so I inspect DA3 to be just another ‘bucket of poo’ (to be polite of course). In the other hand, Project Eternity seem promising and Shadowrun Returns is a nice one.
So far, the latest news we had are somewhat promising, but i'll wait and see specific stuff i'm interested in, and then decide what i'll do.
They said that they are bringing back race selection, and slowly try to bring more freedom to the player, with more customization, more freedom in playstyle of his character/class. These are good signs, but we'll see what actually happens in game, and how do these promises hold.
Neither buying nor playing, but for different reasons than most everyone else.
I was able to play about half-an-hour of DAO before I got too motion-sick to continue. Couldn't stomach Oblivion, either. Thank goodness for top-down isometric RPGs!
Deal breaker: Isometric camera perspective. Will definitely buy DA3 if it can be, in fact, played tactically as the devs have recently claimed. Recent articles have been suspiciously optimistic.
I hear a lot of people bitching about Awakenings but I really liked it. Don't really see much of a problem with it.
I mean, sure it's (once again) visit X areas to do the quest and then move on to kill the boss monster but I liked the background added to the Darkspawn, the Children were messed up weird, the Fade portion was actually interesting this time and the Mother was an octoboobed, eyebleeding tentacled shriekmonster. What's not to love?
(Only points of complaint, Mhairi the Grey Warden recruit was badass and should've survived and Oghren's loyalty resetting to 0 made no sense at all).
Looks terrible. They are obviously designing it for consoles too
Beyond the assumption that it won't improve over the next, what, 18 months of development(?), who cares about how it looks? I care about how it plays, as well as the story. Superman jump forward with swords that give concussive shockwave damage to adjacent foes (splash damage) and other silliness was the main problem with DA ][ (for me), not the so-so environments. Add to that, the constant paratrooper drops of enemies, every NPC seeming to want to bed the character and the creep of anime/manga into the NPC appearances, and you have a pretty gawdawful game...
...Except the dream sequences of Varrick.
I still find the opening (Bethany's so hugely over-endowed that it turned me off to the game at first, before I realized he was embellishing; that made it funny. Similarly, the dream of going after his brother and his crossbow one-hit/killed scores of dudes, with him yelling stuff like, "Bertrand, I'm going to kill you, you nug-humpging bastard!" Hey, I had to get a few minutes of enjoyment out of the long debacle.
Anyway, there are so many reasons to expect this (DA ]|[) to be terrible, so I'm definitely not even on the fence with this one. I'm in the yard, near the fence, but not leaning on it, if that makes sense. NPC's hitting me up for credit card information, and unnecessary multiplayer crammed down my throat (y u mad bro?) in a single-player RPGà là ME3 are to be expected, and, as such, make the game into a 'nice try'.
Beyond the assumption that it won't improve over the next, what, 18 months of development(?), who cares about how it looks? I care about how it plays, as well as the story. Superman jump forward with swords that give concussive shockwave damage to adjacent foes (splash damage) and other silliness was the main problem with DA ][ (for me), not the so-so environments. Add to that, the constant paratrooper drops of enemies, every NPC seeming to want to bed the character and the creep of anime/manga into the NPC appearances, and you have a pretty gawdawful game...
did you watch the video I posted? Because they have obvioiusly kept the DA2 style of combat
@ajwz: What!? Well, DA 2-style of combat is an automatic not-buy for me. I hated the combat in DA 2, for as much as I played that game. Mage Hawke aka Human Fireworks Machine completely ruined immersion for me.
Since the dawn of DLC, the idea of Pay2Win in multiplayer and EA's negative politics towards gamers, I've vowed not to buy any games from companies that extort money from their customers and sell half-baked games for full price just to get the same money additionally piece by piece each DLC or dollardope.
It's really a shame that Bioware chose to be EA's thrall and Blizzard became Activision's one.
@ajwz Didn't realize it was a video (thought it was just an image) and took the comment at face value; the appearance isn't the biggest driver for me. Anyway, if that is what people (in general) want to buy, then let them. I will save myself some money to apply to other projects. I guess it's more a matter of 'couldn't care less' than anything else. It really seems to me that people are angry about what BioWare is producing, where I view it in more of a detached manner. I don't care if it sucks; I just won't buy it.
But, yes. With DA ]|[ looking like DA ][ (in terms of game play and whatnot), I'll say thanks, but no thanks. The story might end up being good, but I'm not interested in playing a console game to unlock that story (yawn). Especially given that I can find anything I want to know about the game from the web without, I might add, investing tens of hours and (assuming the normal DLC cash grab) a hundred US dollars into the process.
Would someone mind explaining to me why the combat in DA2 is considered so much worse than DA1? I've heard loads of people complain how it was "dumbed down", or that it was just mindless hack and slash, rather than tactical combat like in DA1, etc., but as far as I can tell, the only significant functional difference is that it was sped up.
Waiting for DA 3 GOTY edition with all DLC for $19.99. Because EVERY hyped up game has a GOTY edition. I'm still hoping that the import feature doesn't get f-d from the console jump. Yet another reason to abandon my 360 in a deep well somewhere and further upgrade my gaming rig...
TJ_Hooker: Well, just look at the difference in combat animations. DA 2's combat is like that of a typical JRPG, a japanese anime inspired combat game where the characters make ridiculously exaggerated moves while swinging their weapons in combat. Have you never seen mage Hawke in action during combat? It's just ridiculous. It demotivated me from playing on, because I just couldn't stand it. (not like the story was THAT interesting anyway) Also, as was mentioned above by someone: enemies who parachute/jump down onto you ALL the time, and ridiculous numbers of enemies, such as the intro fight with mage Hawke (only class I played as). It's completely over-the-top. I liked DA:O's combat much better. Granted, it was somewhat slow-ish, but at least it was way more realistic (even though some weapons were quite big also) when it came to movements. Just compare the two versions and see for yourself. But also, as was mentioned above, what puts me off also is the usual DLC/cash-grab that will be involved in this game, just as in its sequels. I've become fed up with EA's shallow practices.
@Battlehamster: If I were you, I'd think twice about abandoning my old Xbox 360. Neither of the next-gen consoles quite enthralled me... Especially the Xbox One with Microsoft's many hilarious blunders...
I liked DA:O well enough but it got boring due to the length so I didnt even get through the full game. I didnt bother with DA 2 so 3 is out of the question.
TJ_Hooker: Well, just look at the difference in combat animations. DA 2's combat is like that of a typical JRPG, a japanese anime inspired combat game where the characters make ridiculously exaggerated moves while swinging their weapons in combat. Have you never seen mage Hawke in action during combat? It's just ridiculous. It demotivated me from playing on, because I just couldn't stand it. (not like the story was THAT interesting anyway) Also, as was mentioned above by someone: enemies who parachute/jump down onto you ALL the time, and ridiculous numbers of enemies, such as the intro fight with mage Hawke (only class I played as). It's completely over-the-top. I liked DA:O's combat much better. Granted, it was somewhat slow-ish, but at least it was way more realistic (even though some weapons were quite big also) when it came to movements. Just compare the two versions and see for yourself. But also, as was mentioned above, what puts me off also is the usual DLC/cash-grab that will be involved in this game, just as in its sequels. I've become fed up with EA's shallow practices.
Yes, I definitely noticed the differences in how combat looked between DA 1 and 2, but I'm more interested in hearing differences in how it played. Even if it looks silly, I wouldn't really consider that to be the same as "dumbed down" (which I think is determined by mechanics, rather than visuals). I agree with what you said about parachuting enemies, that mechanic can be pretty annoying. It hadn't really occurred to me that DA2 had larger groups of enemies, but now that you mention it, I think you're right, although I don't know if I'd necessarily consider this to be a bad thing.
Comments
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=645743
Some positive highlights:
- At least three playable races (female/male of humans/dwarves/elves). They're considering Qunari. (No pre-set name, fully voiced)
- Instead of just your characters growing, you also grow your inquisition army through lots of various methods ranging from doing favors, blackmail, finding ancient lore, getting ancient relics, obtaining secrets, making connections, etc, etc. An example of how this helps you is that say a castle turns you away. If you only have a few people, you might just be turned away. However, if your inquisition is an army, you can just siege the castle to get inside.
- Wants to make the action less frantic and more deliberate, returning to more tactics-oriented approach to encounters. Big return to party-based tactics
- Monsters, and dragons for example, do not level up with you. Some are vastly more powerful, forcing you to come back later with proper experience
- You won’t regularly see waves of new bad guys appearing out of nowhere to extend encounters
- Enemy scenario: Fighting a massive, armored dragon, you can target a leg, send warrior into melee range to bash off armor, rogue can sneak up and poison the exposed limb, dragon stumbles around allowing others to unleash spells etc
- “Trying to drive exploration- something that frankly, Bioware hasn’t done in a while.” “In a way like Baldur’s Gate, areas that existed in part just to spaces that you went to, but they had a story of their own.” (Origins didn't even have that)
- Structural style like Dragon Age: Origins
- Working hard to make large areas interesting; slopes, rocks, elevations and your character has tailored animations for overcoming each. Ease of movement key. (I take this to mean that you can no longer be blocked by a small fence, instead you can just climb over it)
- Dialogue/story sequences are the best way to learn about your allies and their abilities
- Writers analyze the story’s main themes and conflicts, then create certain characters around them
- Not all characters are created so that you’ll like them
- BioWare working on the issue of bringing over previous choices in Inquisition (yeah, good luck with that)
And a (very short) .gif of a pre-alpha build: http://i.minus.com/i5Hwa4qjkNKdZ.gif
I've gone from bitterly pessimistic to cautiously optimistic (which is really the best it'll get). At the very least, it looks like they're *trying* to do it right this time so let's hope for the best.
As for the argument that it "breaks RP" - nonsense. Because when you create a character for a game you've never played before, you don't necessarily know in advance which NPCs you'll prefer, which characters will be more compatible with the type of personality you've given your protagonist. My first time through DA:O, I imagined a male protagonist that turned out to be very similar to Morrigan, and it made sense to me that they'd end up together; if I'd chosen a female hero, I would have still felt that way about the characters but romance would be impossible.
So while DA2 has its flaws, the lack of gender restrictions on romance isn't one of them. It's a component that allows you further freedom to shape your character's story - my sarcastic, amoral female mage turned out to be a better match for Isabela than Anders or Fenris, and I just let it happen rather than check Youtube or Wikipedia in advance to know which characters would be available to her.
What Kitteh was trying to say was that that particular topic of discussion was already a few pages ago and also got quite passionate and unfriendly, as discussions about the topic of sexuality usually go. General message was "do we really need to bring that up again?".
If you believe so, nobody's going to stop you, but it's not unwise to think "does this really need to be discussed more than it already has".
I'm more hopeful of the next Dragon Age game producing something that may appeal to me, but I'm not pre-ordering (regardless of exclusive incentives to do so) and I will wait for reviews before I decide though. DA2 was a poor game, especially off the back of Origins imo. Mass Effect on the other hand I have no interest in. It was the stronger game to DA2, all things considered, but I'm a lot less hopeful that series will be something I will enjoy following and investing in personally.
And I haven't played DA II and until I play and Finish it the chances of picking it up is less than 5%
I will wait n see.
They said that they are bringing back race selection, and slowly try to bring more freedom to the player, with more customization, more freedom in playstyle of his character/class. These are good signs, but we'll see what actually happens in game, and how do these promises hold.
I was able to play about half-an-hour of DAO before I got too motion-sick to continue. Couldn't stomach Oblivion, either. Thank goodness for top-down isometric RPGs!
Looks terrible. They are obviously designing it for consoles too
I mean, sure it's (once again) visit X areas to do the quest and then move on to kill the boss monster but I liked the background added to the Darkspawn, the Children were messed up weird, the Fade portion was actually interesting this time and the Mother was an octoboobed, eyebleeding tentacled shriekmonster. What's not to love?
(Only points of complaint, Mhairi the Grey Warden recruit was badass and should've survived and Oghren's loyalty resetting to 0 made no sense at all).
...Except the dream sequences of Varrick.
Anyway, there are so many reasons to expect this (DA ]|[) to be terrible, so I'm definitely not even on the fence with this one. I'm in the yard, near the fence, but not leaning on it, if that makes sense. NPC's hitting me up for credit card information, and unnecessary multiplayer crammed down my throat (y u mad bro?) in a single-player RPG à là ME3 are to be expected, and, as such, make the game into a 'nice try'.
Because they have obvioiusly kept the DA2 style of combat
It's really a shame that Bioware chose to be EA's thrall and Blizzard became Activision's one.
But, yes. With DA ]|[ looking like DA ][ (in terms of game play and whatnot), I'll say thanks, but no thanks. The story might end up being good, but I'm not interested in playing a console game to unlock that story (yawn). Especially given that I can find anything I want to know about the game from the web without, I might add, investing tens of hours and (assuming the normal DLC cash grab) a hundred US dollars into the process.