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Kombo.com (I USED to work there) kind of imploded... This happened right after PAX and right after I worked my self to the bone writing up preview after preview. So, even though none of this is relevant any more, I will be posting these previews for you lovely Bitmobers (and to link to in resumes). Enjoy!
The 20 minute hands-on demonstration of Dragon Age 2 (DA2) at the Penny Arcade Expo allowed me to play as the newly revealed rouge class with a female character model for the first time. The demo concentrated on what Bioware referred to as “The Big Bucket 'O Problems: the graphics, combat, and story.”
Any one who played Dragon Age: Origins (DAO) knows that it didn't always look like a finished product. During the demo it was emphasized that “if you played the PC version [of DAO], it looks better. If you played a console version, you'll be blown away” by DA2. This statement definitely rung true. Dragon Age is sporting a noticeable amount of polish this time round as the main characters features can actually be made out and everything in the environment is defined from everything else: A rock doesn't just look like a bump on the ground and a crowd of enemies doesn't blend into one dangerous blur mass. One down-side (or advantage... depending on how you look at it) to these graphics is that the blood physics that resulted in your DAO character being drenched in red are more so disgusting in DA2.
The second of the “Bucket 'O Problems” has drastically changed from DAO. “Things are really action oriented in [DA2].” During combat, the first thing I noticed was that my rouge fought just how I wanted her to: fast, effective, and dirty. Each of her abilities have her lunging across the battle field. Disappearing and reappearing in ninja-like bursts of smoke, spinning with duel-blades, and turning invisible while using the limbs of fallen enemies to further obscure her form. “We designed the game thinking that when you press a button, something awesome has to happen.” Because of how gritty combat had become, I didn't feel compelled to use the radial menu and pause the battle-- something I did quite often with my mage in DAO. I just wanted to run up to enemies, mash 'X', and occasionally use an ability that was mapped to my face-button pad (which should be renamed the “Kill-Enemies-While-Looking-Really-Cool-Buttons, for the sake of this game).
I also didn't feel the need to command any other member of my party around. They all held their own well enough and I was having too much fun spinning around as a Darkspawn-killing-tornado. Despite not wanting to use these features, I discovered that they still work very well. This is because Bioware wants gamers to be able to “still think like a general, but fight like a Spartan or ninja,” this time around. Things became very tactile when I used my radial menu to position each member of my party in a perimeter, before slowly pulling that perimeter closer around the Darkspawn-crowd.
The last thing Bioware wanted to emphasize with the demo was the change in the Dragon Age story. I enjoyed DAO's story so I wasn't excited to hear this until Bioware cleared up that “it wasn't the story that was the problem, it was how we told it.” DA2 will use what is called a framed narrative: “It's a story within a story.” Things will unfold as an outside character attempts to learn just what went wrong in the kingdom. She decides to track down the tale of the one hero who was there for all of the down fall. You play during these story fragments. For an example of framed narrative, think Arabian Nights (very old famous book) or The Name of the Wind (very good and recent book).
The story is told in a format I am fond of with impressively clean graphics and more compelling gameplay than was ever present in Dragon Age: Origins. This demo managed to spike my interest in Dragon Age 2.
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The other previews:
