Dragon Age 2 demo out now

[DangerAardvark]

Am I the only one that liked ME2 more than ME1? lol

I did too. But that was just because parts of ME 1 were incredibly annoying. Like the inventory system and the Mako levels.

 

[sangamam]

Thanks, DLing it now. Shogun 2's demo is also out on Steam.

Thanks both of you.I would love to try out shogun 2 and Dragon age2 :thumbsup:

 

[Darklife]

Honestly after playing the demo I have mixed feelings. Although I'm thankful that they haven't paractically altered the core combat system the whole control scheme and UI is downright clunky and dysfunctional. The artistic style is also not to my liking, Isabela had watermelons instead of cleavage and Hawke's sword should practically make him fall over. The same goes for the same japanese like swinging and whatnot.

However my biggest complaint is the pacing. I hope that the demo just gave us a hodgepodge of levels and cutscenes, if not then there is really to little exposition.

Spoiler

The brother died before I even learned his name, something which was wholly different for your first companions from DA1.

As I was barely getting familiar with the setting we are instantly whisked to some city in the north and after a 10 second cut scene the game assumes Lucky( that was the ginger dwarf right?) and Isabela are old acquaintances. The whole thing feels more like something from a JRPG to be honest.

The fact that the darkspawn look like villains from Power Rangers also doesn't help, but then again they may play a marginal role this time around.

 

[TheVrolok]

The lack of an overhead view is something that really bothers me. The combat itself is definitely different but not necessarily a negative thing.

I actually like the "prettied up" UI, I think it's much smoother than the DA:O's. I do agree, I miss the overhead view as well. I play in the overhead/top down view 95% of the time. I also got a little annoyed at how often "Loading..." would appear in the middle of "action cut scenes." All in all, though, it looked fun to me. Definitely a bit different than the first, but not necessarily in a bad way .. as long as the story/dialog are still in there, I'm ok with it. Quick question though, WHEN does DA2 take place? Right after DAO? Also,

Spoiler

Flemmeth is in the demo, but weren't you able to kill her in DAO? I thought I did ..

 

[Darklife]

IT's supposed to span something like 10 years and begins right around the time of Ostagar I think.

Spoiler

I think that you merely delayed her finding a new form, I think that Morrigan said so herself. Oh and did Flemeth have some sort of slutty phase after she saved the Grey Wardens? Or does she always dress like that when going out?

 

[TheVrolok]

IT's supposed to span something like 10 years and begins right around the time of Ostagar I think.

Spoiler

I think that you merely delayed her finding a new form, I think that Morrigan said so herself. Oh and did Flemeth have some sort of slutty phase after she saved the Grey Wardens? Or does she always dress like that when going out?

Ah, yeah I honestly couldn't remember. I was thinking about trying to get a DAO/DAO:A + DLCs playthrough in before picking up DA2 just to get the storyline down again .. and to change some of the choices I made first time through (as I didn't like them all).. but man, I don't know if I want to spend that vast amount of time as a Mage again even though I plan on importing a Mage to DA2. Hmm. Wish there was a save game editor that could toggle all the "big choices."

Edit: Actually, I didn't even think I as I was writing that .. since you don't continue as your DA:O character, I suppose it really doesn't matter what class you finished the playthrough as. It's only the "history" that is saved.

 

[Darklife]

Don't worry all those BIG CHOICES will probably impact the story in a minute way, if at all. Look at what happened in Awakening or ME2.

 

[TheVrolok]

Don't worry all those BIG CHOICES will probably impact the story in a minute way, if at all. Look at what happened in Awakening or ME2.

Very valid point. Quite a bit of the time those "big choices" only affect what, 1 or 2 lines of dialog? "Remember when BIG CHOICE happened?" and that's about it.

 

[Darklife]

At least ME2 bothered to send you e-mails. I guess DA2 will settle for magic messanger pigeons or something.

 

[you2]

I want to make sure I understand this demo; you play till you get to the chantry and then it just stops. Kaput. That's it. Nothing happens; you just reach the end of hte road and there is no further. Well there is a huge breasted chick standing at the door but she is not in the mood to talk to you or otherwise interact. The doors do not open; there is no flashing light that sez; thanks for playing our crappy demo; the end; you just stand there looking for a way to open the doors wondering if the main game is like this ?

 

[Nox51]

Frankly I wouldn't go start making assumptions regarding the storyline from the demo. I'd stick to just gameplay and core changes rather than what the story is.

DA is a long game story wise whichever way you cut it and trying to cram it into a demo just won't work, hence why it probably seems a bit disjointed.

 

[Throckmorton]

I want to make sure I understand this demo; you play till you get to the chantry and then it just stops. Kaput. That's it. Nothing happens; you just reach the end of hte road and there is no further. Well there is a huge breasted chick standing at the door but she is not in the mood to talk to you or otherwise interact. The doors do not open; there is no flashing light that sez; thanks for playing our crappy demo; the end; you just stand there looking for a way to open the doors wondering if the main game is like this ?

I got cut off when I was helping the pirate chick, because I alt tabbed and the game crashed. The dwarf is telling the story and you're just playing little segments from the full game. It's not the first 5% of the game or anything like that. You can tell because from the 2nd to the 3rd segment, your levels and skills increase by a lot.

 

[Dumac]

I want to make sure I understand this demo; you play till you get to the chantry and then it just stops. Kaput. That's it. Nothing happens; you just reach the end of hte road and there is no further. Well there is a huge breasted chick standing at the door but she is not in the mood to talk to you or otherwise interact. The doors do not open; there is no flashing light that sez; thanks for playing our crappy demo; the end; you just stand there looking for a way to open the doors wondering if the main game is like this ?

Uhhh I was able to go into the chantry, where you fought a boss-ish battle.

Anyway, I finished the demo, but no new observations were made. Turns out th ere was only like another 10 or 20 minutes after the 20 I originally played. Very short demo

Doesn't matter, since I've had the game preordered forever.

 

[Dumac]

IT's supposed to span something like 10 years and begins right around the time of Ostagar I think.

Spoiler

I think that you merely delayed her finding a new form, I think that Morrigan said so herself. Oh and did Flemeth have some sort of slutty phase after she saved the Grey Wardens? Or does she always dress like that when going out?

Spoiler

Maybe that is what she looks like, but she took the form of an harmless looking woman so that the great wardens wouldn't know of the true power and of her true intentions.

 

[DangerAardvark]

Spoiler

Maybe that is what she looks like, but she took the form of an harmless looking woman so that the great wardens wouldn't know of the true power and of her true intentions.

The real question is how much hairspray did it take to get her hair like that.

 

[Demo24]

I want to make sure I understand this demo; you play till you get to the chantry and then it just stops. Kaput. That's it. Nothing happens; you just reach the end of hte road and there is no further. Well there is a huge breasted chick standing at the door but she is not in the mood to talk to you or otherwise interact. The doors do not open; there is no flashing light that sez; thanks for playing our crappy demo; the end; you just stand there looking for a way to open the doors wondering if the main game is like this ?

There was a door or something up the stairs after you meet Isabella. It ends shortly after another battle and you'll know cause it throws you into the trailer, which is basically what you are playing.


As for storyline. The demo isn't there to run you through much of a story, it simply gives you some glances at various points in the game. It also hints back at the trailer for it, and gives you some more story for it. Normal game will progress properly.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I just got my copy of PC gamer and they gave the game a 94 percent editor's choice award. They said the storyline was really good. However, I question the objectivity of their review, since they must have obviously had special co-operation from Bioware in order to have access to that much of the game before it even came out.

Definitely will not pay full price for the game, but might buy it in a year or so if a game of the year edition comes out at a decent price.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Oh. I assumed you meant something already released...well, I trust BioWare to do a good job with TOR. It has the same lead writer as KotOR (Drew Karpyshyn), and they've made a point to have every line of dialogue voice acted, just like their single player RPGs are. (The devs have gone on the record saying the choice to fully voice a huge MMO was a stupidly ambitious one, but they did it anyways) I'd rather the art style not be so cartoony but it's probably the best route for the masses with low-end hardware that will likely end up playing it. You can still recruit NPC characters, although you only bring one into combat.

I'm wary of it being an MMO myself -- the last MMO I played was Runescape five years ago, and no MMO has interested me since -- but I'm not going to shoot the horse before it's left the gate. I'll buy it, play the one-month trial, and decide for myself. Reviews will mean nothing to me since they will inevitably evaluate it as an MMO, which I have no standard for.

It is an MMO. By definition that ruins the game for me.

 

[you2]

Humph. I think I'll wait a while on this one. The demo just wasn't fun for me. Hopefully ME3 will be good.

 

[Wardawg1001]

I tried the demo on X360, which may have been a mistake since I played DA:O on PC. Overall, I'm pretty disgusted. The combat has been changed to your generic hack and slash action-rpg crap. Yes you can still pause, but this combat has basically no similarities to the DA:O style combat besides the names of the spells and skills. Maybe I'll feel different when the full game comes out and I can crank the difficulty up to Nightmare where you might actually need to pause, but I'm not holding any real hope for it. Besides the lore, this doesn't feel anything at all like DA:O.

 

[Qbah]

Well, I really enjoyed the demo. Can't wait for the game to come out Need to finish DA : O first though... can't bring myself to go through the dwarf underground place thing D:

 

[Dumac]

I tried the demo on X360, which may have been a mistake since I played DA:O on PC. Overall, I'm pretty disgusted. The combat has been changed to your generic hack and slash action-rpg crap. Yes you can still pause, but this combat has basically no similarities to the DA:O style combat besides the names of the spells and skills. Maybe I'll feel different when the full game comes out and I can crank the difficulty up to Nightmare where you might actually need to pause, but I'm not holding any real hope for it. Besides the lore, this doesn't feel anything at all like DA:O.

I've heard the 360 version of DA2 was changed to be more "actiony" since they felt the tactical combat didn't work well on it.

However, I haven't played the 360 version so I don't know the difference from the PC version...

But I feel the more action based style spilled heavily into the PC version as well.

 

[Mem]

I was not going to bother with the demo due to my DA2 Pre-order of Signature version,anyway the free game items you can get once you complete the demo persuaded me in the end.

I like the faster pace of the game action ,I had no crashes at all so stability was excellent on my PC ,overall it seems good from what I have seen with the demo.

 

[sticks435]

I've heard the 360 version of DA2 was changed to be more "actiony" since they felt the tactical combat didn't work well on it.

However, I haven't played the 360 version so I don't know the difference from the PC version...

But I feel the more action based style spilled heavily into the PC version as well.

You are thinking of Origins. The style of play was completely different between consoles and PC for that reason. However, the lead designer at Bioware has stated that now they are both the same. Only differences being UI and graphics.

 

[Dumac]

You are thinking of Origins. The style of play was completely different between consoles and PC for that reason. However, the lead designer at Bioware has stated that now they are both the same. Only differences being UI and graphics.

You have to press A for every normal attack on the consoles, I think. Besides and graphics, that you are right.