By the way, I very much doubt that I will ever buy Dragon Age 2. I have been stuck for days trying to pass the boss of Dragon Age Origins in the Ostagar level. I never managed to kill it and he always killed all my four guys at only half his life bar. I also can’t manage to make the over complex tactics work. I personaly think that the game is too complex and way to linear to be fun. Too bad.

@ Liudvikas:
Gaaahhhh. I had missed the Skyrim video… OK, I know what I will ask for my birthday!

I liked the demo. The combat is faster, which I personally like, yet it still felt like I was playing Dragon Age: Origins. It is still plenty hard.

Now, I myself have no problem with the dialogue wheel but I quickly noticed one pretty subtle but important evolution. You can actually tell the mood of your response. In the center of the wheel, pictures appears when you highlight response options. A purple smiley mask when you are being witty, a olive branch when diplomatic, a red fist when being aggressive. They are still placed the same way they where in Mass Effect, but it is easier to tell what you are going to say now.

Zel wrote:

Wait, wasn’t Dragon Age turned from a difficult strategic party-based RPG close to Baldur’s Gate to a fast-paced, single character with AI help action-RPG in the sequel ?

That’s what I thought at first too, but then I played the demo and I realized that this was not the case. During the first fight in the demo it is just you, and your single companion is controlled by AI. Even then, it is not a twitch based – it works just like in the first game. You pick targets, click skill icons on the toolbar, etc… If you play past the first combat scene, and get to the first “real” segment you get a full party and it’s just like old times:

– you still can pause the game at any moment and give orders
– you still can take control of any character in your party at will
– you are still able to assign tactics to your inactive party members (see 4th picture – my tactics are empty because I didn’t set anything up)

It appears that they left the core combat mechanics the same complexity wise. The combat seems faster, but I think this is mostly a cosmetic change. Darkspawn seem to run faster, and you can’t zoom out as far as in the previous game (though you still can get a decent vantage) meaning the tactical area of the battle is smaller leading to faster resolution. I think this was done mostly due to people complaining about the glacial pace of the Deep Roads slog midway though the first game.

Zel wrote:

With a single imposed character, the story doesn’t look all that interesting as far as branching goes, which is what I’m mostly interested in.

Yeah, it’s unfortunate. I really liked the multiple origin idea. That said, I only played the game through once with my Dwarf noble warrior, and then re-rolled as human mage but got bored soon after I was out of the origin segment. So I’m not really sure how much the game as a whole was affected by your back story and early choices. I imagine that if I went back to the Dwarf area as a different character most of the missions would play out about the same, minus some conversation options here and there.

But yeah, I am not particularly keen on Hawke. I wish you could still play as Gray Warden from the first game. :(

Wait, wasn’t Dragon Age turned from a difficult strategic party-based RPG close to Baldur’s Gate to a fast-paced, single character with AI help action-RPG in the sequel ?

Can you still enter the strategic view ? Can you still give orders to your whole party and set up advanced tactics without having to rely on the AI, however parametrized it can be ? I don’t really care about having numerous numbers on the character’s sheet if my effectiveness is more linked to my skill at pressing buttons at the right moment than to my character’s stats.

With a single imposed character, the story doesn’t look all that interesting as far as branching goes, which is what I’m mostly interested in. Good plot twists and hard choices with consequences have seldom been a part of Bioware’s game, and I doubt it’ll change.

The dialog wheel is a sad evolution, and rather unwarranted considering most people I know play with subtitles and skip all spoken lines halfway through anyway. I really didn’t like this in Mass Effect, especially because it makes subtle dialogues lines impossible to tell apart (i.e. using sarcasm or being honest about something).

Overall, as you may have guessed, I’m not too hyped by this game. It just doesn’t look all that interesting to play, and if the story’s good I could just as well watch a LP.

Bioware has admitted that small details like whether or not Allistair is king and some other small tidbits will come back in the sequel, but it won’t be some sort of choice-fest playback like Mass Effect 2 was.

@ Luke Maciak:
Well it still takes place at the same time, so decisions made by warden will affect the world for hawke.

@ Liudvikas:

Will the saves from Origins have any impact on this game though? I figured that since you are not the Gray Warden and Morrigan is not making an appearance they probably won’t count for much…

Yeah I did try it out. Got in the mood for that after watching Skyrim trailer for gazillion times, so had to kill some time before getting a new rpg :)
Haven’t tried out warrior yet, but mage and rogue looks awesome. Can’t decide which character to play first rogue like I did in origins, or blood mage because I feel it would be better for roleplay purposes :)

P.S. For the first time in any rpg I liked the default appearance of the character. That alone deserves respect.
P.P.S. I lost my saves and now cant decide whether it’s worth replaying origins just so I can get a little more personalized story.