Dragon Age

[Aleema]

@Chansel: yeeeah, I guess you're right about the Archers. I didn't mean that they were underpowered, in that they did suck damage, just what you said: their abilities took forever and thus I avoided them, making the archer suck. I played with an archer mod, however. I'm glad we won't have to patch that ourselves this time around. What we WILL have to patch is the cooldowns for heal spells. That was ridiculous.

I'm going to play a mage because this is my party: Fenris, Anders, Sebastian. Can't have two archers! Well, you can. But the other totally gets jealous of me and our bows get tangled.

The AOE effect range is more realistic, but like you said, more frustration since you have to predict the future! Like traps. But I guess that's what makes it more tactical? They keep saying it's still a tactical game, but I will wait until I have more party members and control of the difficulty to pass judgement on that. I rarely gave orders to my party members in the demo, is all I'm saying. And the tactics screen upgraded itself (or just plain didn't work).

@papillon: Yeouch. There are some reasons to hate the demo, and you hit on some of them, but the phrase "The Champion"!? C'mon! It's like watching the beginning of a movie and then trying to review it. Give them time to explain and unravel. If they took your hand and started some sort of exposition about "Where is the Champion btw those are people that Kirkwall worships like the Paragons, since you're a dwarf, people who live in mountains, and I'm a templar and I hate mages, but I work for the Chantry, which is our religion etc" would have made me face-palm WAY more.

I agree that Flemeth's costume is inconsistent (a LOT of things are, like the darkspawn) and feminizing for no reason, yet ... I like the design! She's an older woman, and they could have stuck to the grandma clothes because old women are icky. Instead, the designers embraced her beauty, and that has to be given some points. That said, when a person transforms from a dragon into a person, that person better look farking cool. No one shapeshifts from a dragon into "harmless old lady". xD But I get what you're saying here, totally. It may hint at things to come and the treatment of female characters. And if you made it to Isabella's screen time (assuming you didn't -- where did you crash, exactly?) you'd likely spit on your screen at her boob size and lack of pants.

I agree that the demo was a lot of herding down a road to fight the same battle a bajillion times. However, I have to remind myself that this is basically the "tutorial" of the game. All of the "tutorial sewer rat" levels are crappy to play. If this is indicative of how repetitive gameplay will be for all quests, then yeah, I'd be way turned off, too. From what I've seen, it's not. Since it's in Kirkwall, you'll mostly be fighting humans, who can come in varied parties like your own. And the worst fights are always your dopplegangers! Thankfully, they broke up the demo's monotonous grinding with plenty of cutscenes (some people hated that, but I make VNs, sooo). I really think you should just hate the intro of the game, not the game itself if the linear/grinding turned you off.

As for confusing leveling, I liked it but I love complex RPG shiat. I'm glad they didn't dumb it down or make skill progression linear. I think what you're feeling right now is what I feel every time I expose myself to a new Final Fantasy leveling system. Sphere grid, junctioning, license board whaaaat? And after a while, I totally get it, and I wouldn't have it any other way (because that way wouldn't make the game as deep or exciting). It's your money, however. Maybe watch some "Let's Play" videos when it's out. Maybe this one with the intro of Fenris. (To the other ladies who ARE buying the game: don't watch!! spoilers.)

General note: GAME WILL BE OUT IN ONE WEEK.

[papillon]

There are some reasons to hate the demo, and you hit on some of them, but the phrase "The Champion"!?

I don't hate the demo, and I certainly don't hate it because of that. I just commented that it felt false to me, and since my blog is expressly for WHINING ABOUT NITPICKY STUFF... I did point out, when it was brought up here, that it's a very minor issue that will probably resolve as the plot goes on.

And if you made it to Isabella's screen time (assuming you didn't -- where did you crash, exactly?) you'd likely spit on your screen at her boob size and lack of pants.

I saw Isabella only for a split second because the game started screwing up at that point - the cutscene began running at double speed so it cut back and forth between people out of sync, and then crashed when it tried to put me in a new combat setting. But I didn't have a problem with her, because it seemed totally in keeping for her character even if it was a redesign. I've since seen people being kinda creeped out by Merrill's redesign though.

As for confusing leveling, I liked it but I love complex RPG shiat. I'm glad they didn't dumb it down or make skill progression linear.

I don't object to the leveling being slightly more confusing, I know I'll get the hang of it and if nothing else there will be guides. However, they were on the record doing this big huge speech about how they HAD dumbed down the game to make it more accessible because their metrics showed a lot of people quit playing the first game within four hours, so they were all "Obviously we need less stats and more action!" which was making me eyeroll, because my reaction to the same data was "Obviously we need to tune up tutorial areas like Ostagar so that people see the cool plot and don't get bogged down in the boring repetitive combat parts." And as I'd grumpily blogged a reaction to that speech earlier, I was puzzled by what I actually saw as their new skill choice system.

My whine was not "This skill system sucks!" but "Wait, I thought you guys said you were trying to make it simpler? Are we using different definitions of the word?"

Anyway, I'll probably play the game eventually, but it will not be on launch. It wasn't likely to be on launch anyway, as I'm BUSY!

[Aleema]

Fair enough. xD See? I whine about games, too.

I dislike how "lowest common denominator" they're going, too. My first thought about 80% using Male Shepard in Mass Effect wasn't that there were 80% male players -- it told me that most of the players did the default setting and cared nothing for character customization. They used the default class and everything. It seems a money-grab to want MORE of those people, and less of the people who appreciate what you've done with the game and keep playing after 4 hours in.

[Aleema]

In other news, there is now a mod out to where you can use the Character Creator in the demo and set the demo's difficulty.

Gibbed wrote...
http://mod.gib.me/dragonage2/demo/chargen.7z

Extract this to My Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age 2 Demo\

It enables the appearance customization and other junk in the character
generation screen. Note: to customize appearance, slide the preset
slider over a few times (you can't customize the default faces for some
reason).

another note, it also enables the difficulty selection after you complete character generation, nightmare demo anyone?

I'm playing with the character creator right now!!

Edit: you can make some CUTE guys with it, too.

[Chansel]

Noooo! I was just about to post this, thinking I had new news T^T
Darn. Well, I'll be the first to post my custom male Hawke then

I reaaaly love him. But his family turned out... well... Let's just say Dante got all the good genes and then there weren't any left.
Judge for yourself:

EDIT: Oh, you forgot to mention that you can change the difficulty lvl at the end of the character creator I'm not sure if this works yet, because all I've done so far is create characters, but I have no reason to believe it won't work. Sooo, yay!

[Aleema]

<3 <3 <3 Our guys aren't that different yay for taste. *edited post, oops!*
And I did not forget about the difficulty! xD My game crashed while playing on Hard, though. But I don't care, I wanted another chance to make a new char anyway ...

Your siblings DO change if you make off-the-path chars (but I haven't seen much variety), but the skintones are messy right now. Obviously this was not ready for the demo, so I'm not complaining..

Edit: Here were my siblings:

[Chansel]

Ooh, I like how we both went for the same male hairstyle ^^ Great minds think alike, ne?
Your carver looks nice though. Mine has that odd, greased back hair. And the whole family (minus main Hawke) has this gigantic nose. Even though the base model I picked didn’t really have a big nose. I’ll just blame it on the ‘it wasn’t even supposed to be usable yet’-line and hope that the family looks better in the actual game.

And I did not forget about the difficulty! xD My game crashed while playing on Hard, though.

Really? Tough luck. I just finished it on hard. And it did feel a tad more difficult. Had to use heal 3 times during the ogre fight. Which shows just how loooong it took, since heal has a 60sec cooldown O.o
Gonna try it on nightmare next. See what happens (my guess is a quick death, since tactics refuse to work properly)

With FemHawke I stumbled upon a preset that uses the same models as the ones with the default look. Or at least models that look very alike. Though this could just be because this is a mod/hack or something. Either way, since the FemHawke I made is awesome, if I may say so myself, I’m probably going to try and make my final one the same way. I’m such a dork that I actually took screenshots of all the different editable sections so that I can really recreate her >.<” Because I know that otherwise, I just won’t be able to. I changed quite a lot of things.
She kinda looks like she could be your Hawke’s family


Say, do any of you have a name picked out for your Hawke yet? I have Dante for my male Hawke, but I'm torn on femHawke. I’m thinking Gabrielle, Rosaline or Endrea (<- After Andraste).

EDIT: Hah, Aleema! I spotted you on the bioware forums

FemHawke

The family with their beautifull, odd tanlines :P

[Aleema]

Ha, she kinda looks like you, too! I wanna applaud you for not going with tattoos, too. Everyone puts tattoos on just because you can. I only did it for elves or dwarves, and since we're neither ... However, I tried it on one of my fun gens, it looked good, but I took it off, and she looked sooo plain that I wanted it back. xD

Nova (may be my "snarky" archer):

But did gen my FAVORITE pair of siblings. Gosh, I lurved both of them. <3 Yes, I like the slicked back hair, hehe.

And another just for fun (may be my "good" mage):

As for a name, no, actually! Surprisingly, I do use the name "Bethany" sometimes for my RPG chars, so I guess I definitely won't this time around. xD

I hate the black BG even MORE now! You can't see dark hair colors! I had to turn it on white ... oh ... wait, is that my contrast problem again? Could you easily see the diff hair colors in dark? Please say it was at least a little annoying. UGH STUPID MONITOR.

Nightmare difficult is hard. I know that's weird to say, but it was such a jump of difficulty from Hard. Friendly Fire is a biaaatch, I didn't even realize that's why I was killing myself repeatedly in the first damn battle. xD I did survive on my eighth attempt, leveled up, got new party members, did fine ... until the battle with that weird, long monster right before orge. I'm guessing the orge would've eaten me for breakfast, too. Meh! I'll stick with "hard" thank you!

Edit: Who are you on Bioware?? LET'S FRIEND!

[Riviera]

Character creator hack?! *disappears for the next few days to tinker with faces*

I actually love the facial tattoos, and how they can bring out the curves and nuances of the character faces.

Although I'd never get one irl, god no.

Ahaha, talk about great minds. Bethany is actually one of my stock character names!

[Chansel]

Ha, she kinda looks like you, too!

Hah! I wish XD

I kinda liked the tattoos, they really did add something to the face. Especially the one you used on Nova. I’m constantly tempted to slap that onto my characters faces.. But, I dunno... I believe that face tattoos should be something special, something significant. Like the Dust Town mark-thing, or the Dalish tattoos. So putting them on my rouge Hawke feels... Odd. I’m putting one on my evil bloodmage though. And I’ll make it red(-ish) and pretend it’s blood to scare people of. Mwahahaha. *cough, cough*

And THOSE are your favorite pair of siblings? Really? Those are the ones that made me cringe. As do the other ‘custom’ pair, truth be told. I once saw a really good looking pair in the background when David Gaider was being interviewed. I’ll be aiming to get them in the final version

Yeah, the black haircolors blended a little too well with the bg. I could see them, yes. But not very good. So it’s not just your monitor being strange this time

Nightmare difficulty was... Simpler than I expected to be honest. I actually made it past the ogre with only Carver dying on me O.o Took me forever, but I really enjoyed it. I had to be all tactical and stuff. Whenever I was going to shoot a fireball, I made carver and Aveline either move out of the way, or use that stonewall (?) ability to reduce damage. Friendly fire really added to the tactical part of the game. It’s a shame that we only get it on Nightmare. Because even though I expected it to be more difficult, it was still brutal. I had to micromanage every second, or else someone would suddenly drop dead ^^” I’d love to see friendly fire on Hard. That seems like a nice difficulty to play
Fingers crossed for a mod!

I have a really, really creative name on Bioware. You’ll never guess who I am. Mwahahaa.
(...Chansel)

Funny that you two both use Bethany as your character name XD You could still use it though. Just play a mage Or change your name a little and make it, uhm... Beth or Bethanie, Bethenie... Whatever

Moar Hawkes! I love how these two came from the same preset XD

[Aleema]

Romance update: All love interests have been confirmed bi. Meaning, you can romance any of the 4 available LIs, no matter your Hawke's gender. (Confirmed not by Bioware, but by people who are playing the game early with livestream proof.)

Sebastian, the DLC archer, has been revealed by the official strategy guide to be romancable, but chaste (no sex).

You can enter into 2 kinds of relationships with the LIs: Friendship or Rivalry. You have to max out one or the other, however. So you can have hot steamy will-they-or-wont-they love, or it-was-destiny-love. I wonder how big a difference they really are. Completely different cutscenes, or just a few lines different? If it's completely different cutscenes ... I'm going to be replaying this game a lot. ;_;

DA2 is now a dating sim, and I have no problem with that.


@Chansel: Yeah! I guess I really liked short-haired Bethany, and I think my appreciation for the slicked-back hair comes from Sebastian. xD Bethany is kinda a weird character, she stands in a damn princess pose, but when the Templar comes, she's all snarky and speaking out of turn. Did not mesh well with me, like she became a totally different character. The short hair, for some reason, seemed way more appropriate for her and lets me accept that she has her moments of rebellion while still being very feminine.

Luckily, there might be even MORE options for the character creator, since it was only the unfinished demo version. From what I can tell, the siblings you get depends on the preset you build off of? So find the preset face that gives the chars you want, I think.

I'm actually going to do something unprecedented for me ... and play one game as the default Lady Hawke. ^^ She's actually rather pretty, and the blood smear is pretty cool! I'm deciding now if it's my rogue or mage, though ...

As for difficulty mode, I was playing as a mage, too. I think most of my difficulty with it was NOT knowing that there was friendly fire and kept killing myself and party members. After I figured that out, I did fine for the most part. Party members died in battles, but not everyone. Still, it wasn't "more tactical" it was just annoying for me at this point, so I'll probably stick to "Hard". ^^;

@Riviera: Well, that's funny! You use Bethany, too? xD Maybe it's "great minds" or we're just uncreative, lol.

[papillon]

Unfortunately, that's the *only* positive thing I've heard about the game in ages.

The reviews I've seen, despite still giving the game high scores (possibly because they were BRIBED) appear an endless stream of "this feature was removed, this feature was so simplified it was practically removed, these characters are less interesting, lack of direction, lack of plot, choices have no effects, no more stealing, no more persuading, no party inventory..."

I admit my skepticism is leading me to resonate with negative reviews more than positive ones, but at the moment this has tanked from 'maybe in a few months when i'm less busy' to 'maybe if it hits $10'

[Aleema]

I'm playing this game, and I have to say, it was VERY worth it's selling price. F**k those critics. Less interesting characters my f**king ass!! These chars are as good, but I think ten times better, than the chars in DA:O. I was pessimistic from the start, but actually playing the game has completely turned me around. It is one of the best RPGs I've played in a long damn time. Why? The story. The way the character development is handled. The characters themselves. Yes, compared to DA:O some things will seem stripped. But you know what? THEY WEREN'T. They're just presented in a different way.

There IS a party inventory, you just don't have to fuss between all 7 of your companions to see if their hat is slightly better than the hat you just found, every time you find any piece of clothing. And I love the outfits they designed for them; I don't want to cover them all up in the same chainmail. There IS stealing and persuading. No, you can't steal from everyone you meet, but I never, ever did that, so I don't miss it. Yes, you can persuade people using your Good/Neutral/Intimidate points, but only when they allow (just like in the first one). No, you can't be a dwarf or elf, but they have given you a commendable personal story that had me completely torn about my family. These characters are REAL to me. This town is ALIVE. I never feel like I'm GRINDING. This is a GOOD GAME.

I will write a full review when I am done. Suffice it to say now that ... I love it. A lot.

[sayuri]

I'll admit, some of those complaints are valid. There seems to be less of an emphasis on party dialogue since it's very structured, you can't do like Origins and blast through all of Alistair's dialogue before ever leaving Flemeth's house. And, it's true, there are plenty of moments where I don't know exactly what the purpose of the quest is. Still, I'm about twenty hours in and I can say the individual quests do have a flow to them and you CAN see your impression on the world. I wouldn't go so far as to wait for it to be in the bargain bin though. It's different from Origins, but it's still pretty freaking amazing. I highly recommend that you at least borrow it from a friend and make your own judgments.

*EDIT*

Apologies for the crappy picture quality but here is my lovely Hawke!

[papillon]

Cute!

Aleema - I expect my enthusiasm will pick up again later as fans get interested and squee about it. I didn't buy Origins for ages after it first came out because my skepticism levels were too high but I got into it eventually. I was mostly surprised at how negative the high-scoring review was (plus a spoiler someone said about the ending that I won't repeat and I don't know if it's true).

I don't think the DRM allows you to 'borrow' a PC copy even if I had local friends who were playing, though. Me and consoles don't mix.