• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Dragon Age II |OT| The Revenge of Shit Mountain

Ashkeloth

Member
Holy shit, this is the best OP I've ever seen.

Whilst I'm going to reserve judgment on the game until it is actually released and the initial outrage over "OMG CHANGE" is gone, Bioware should definitely fire their PR department
 

Chiggs

Member
Ashkeloth said:
Holy shit, this is the best OP I've ever seen.

Whilst I'm going to reserve judgment on the game until it is actually released and the initial outrage over "OMG CHANGE" is gone, Bioware should definitely fire their PR department

I want to believe, but I have a feeling this isn't going to end well. It just looks bad and the changes appear to have been made in order to cater to retards.
 

K.Sabot

Member
God that last pic gets me every fucking time.

Just needs a "Everything went better than expected" caption on it, but I guess we'll have to find out if the game is good first.
 

KJTB

Member
I loved origins and I enjoyed the demo, buying this day 1. I'm excited, I need a good break from fps games :D

The OP got a pretty good laugh out of me, good show.
 

pahamrick

Member
Awesome, awesome OP!

This is what happens when a development studio decides to begin work on and drastically change a sequel before the release of the first game. Guess that kinda shows the faith they had in the original DA:O.
 

Truant

Member
pahamrick said:
Awesome, awesome OP!

This is what happens when a development studio decides to begin work on and drastically change a sequel before the release of the first game. Guess that kinda shows the faith they had in the original DA:O.

Or its audience.
 

Piecake

Member
glaurung said:
Good, that video was pretty much what I wanted to hear.

The comparison with WoW raids is a bit worrying though... I am afraid that this will mean cumbersome party member location management and can make the battles that much more frustrating.

There are bosses that have that. I know that you have to hide behind a pillar when he does his super move. I highly highly doubt that positioning will be nearly as important in DAO than it is in WoW though.

As long as its little things, like hiding behind a pillar to avoid an insta death AoE, I really have no problem with it, since I think it would add a bit of variety to the boss battles, and make them feel more unique.
 

Durante

Member
shinobi602 said:
The one thing I disliked about Origins was reading the monotonous lines over and over again. It broke up the immersion of the conversations having to read which sentence to pick, sometimes there were upwards of 8 sentences)
Oh god, the humanity! Upwards of 8 sentences!! I can't actually remember that happening, mostly the options were too few and short.

This is one of my favourite parts of Baldur's Gate:
bg1_diayrd4.png



shinobi602 said:
Might have missed a few points, but these are the main ones.
You missed quite a lot, including my biggest complaint: friendly fire being relegated to Nightmare only from being the default in the first game (which only had no FF on easy and casual). That, to me, shows exactly what they are going for with the battles, and I don't like it.
 
Durante said:
Oh god, the humanity! Upwards of 8 sentences!!

Dude, I have no problem reading. That's all I do in college.

It's the fact that it took out of the immersion factor during the conversations. If my character and party are having a conversation with others, and I'm getting into it, then a bunch of sentences pop up, I read each one, deciding which to pick. My main gripe, is while this is happening, my character is standing there like a zombie staring into space. It really breaks it up for me, because it takes longer to read the sentences than a few words that summarize what I'll say next (Mass Effect).


Durante said:
You missed quite a lot, including my biggest complaint: friendly fire being relegated to Nightmare only from being the default in the first game (which only had no FF on easy and casual). That, to me, shows exactly what they are going for with the battles, and I don't like it.

It's not like you'll play DA2 on Normal anyway, will you?
 

Ashodin

Member
I think I'll play DA2 on Hard this time instead of Normal for DAO (which I just recently bumped it up to Hard as well). Sounds like fun!
 

MrHicks

Banned
wasn't the "dragon age universe/lore/backstory etc" something they had been working on for ages?

how come its soooo fucking generic then?
it took years and years to come up with a shameless LOTR copy & paste job?
 

EDarkness

Member
The OP was cool and I got a good laugh out of it.

Still buying the game day 1, but I do wonder why make an official thread like this? I thought that these things were for people to discuss the game in a more positive light. If you don't like it at all, then why do the official thread? More curious than anything else, though.
 

glaurung

Member
Since I know that there are people on these boards who are very well acquainted with the game already, some questions:
  1. Is there a New Game+ feature? If yes, what does it carry over and what not?
  2. What are the default difficulty settings available from the start?
  3. Which unlockable difficulty settings are there and how are they unlocked?
  4. Any integration with the first Dragon Age?
  5. Is there any kind of crafting in DA2?
 

Ysiadmihi

Banned
EDarkness said:
The OP was cool and I got a good laugh out of it.

Still buying the game day 1, but I do wonder why make an official thread like this? I thought that these things were for people to discuss the game in a more positive light. If you don't like it at all, then why do the official thread? More curious than anything else, though.

I think it's perfectly fine for an OT to troll a sequel that's basically made to troll fans of the first.
 
I remember a MW2 troll |OT| like this.

It got locked and the user got banned. Hmmm.... (disclaimer: this game looks like the absolute fucking worst)
 
glaurung said:
Since I know that there are people on these boards who are very well acquainted with the game already, some questions:
  1. Is there a New Game+ feature? If yes, what does it carry over and what not?
  2. What are the default difficulty settings available from the start?
  3. Which unlockable difficulty settings are there and how are they unlocked?
  4. Any integration with the first Dragon Age?
  5. Is there any kind of crafting in DA2?

Save importing from DAO "world changing decisions" like who you made king. If you never played DAO you get to pick from a few choices of what the story was when you start a new game.
Crafting is in but not done like it is in DAO, you don't carry around the ingredients with you, you have to find "sources" of the ingredients. Something like that...
Casual, Normal, Hard, Nightmare. Nightmare is the only difficulty that has friendly fire. Don't know if there's unlockable difficulties or ng+.
 

EDarkness

Member
Ysiadmihi said:
I think it's perfectly fine for an OT to troll a sequel that's basically made to troll fans of the first.

I don't consider the new game to be "trolling", honestly. I played the demo and had a lot of fun with it, even played it twice. Just seems so odd for an official thread to basically be a joke.
 

Piecake

Member
glaurung said:
Since I know that there are people on these boards who are very well acquainted with the game already, some questions:
  1. Is there a New Game+ feature? If yes, what does it carry over and what not?
  2. What are the default difficulty settings available from the start?
  3. Which unlockable difficulty settings are there and how are they unlocked?
  4. Any integration with the first Dragon Age?
  5. Is there any kind of crafting in DA2?

1. No
2. Believe its easy, normal, hard, and nightmare.
3. Believe you have access to all of them from the beginning.
4. A bit, basically your state of the world transfers over (who is Ferelden's ruler, and what not)
5. Yes, but it is a bit different than DAO.

Basically, crafting is now based on exploration instead of hording. You find a material vein out in the world some where and then that material can be accessed by shops. The crafting is done there. So no more crafting skills, but you still need recipes. Not sure if crafting at shops cost money or not
 

Kritz

Banned
MrHicks said:
wasn't the "dragon age universe/lore/backstory etc" something they had been working on for ages?

how come its soooo fucking generic then?
it took years and years to come up with a shameless LOTR copy & paste job?

Because in the world of video game fantasy, a huge universe usually means "this happened then this happened then this happened then you play the game and then 100 years in the future the next game comes out and between that time something else happened", and after all that effort creating history where you have to remember the names of the people who did important things, you just make sure the dwarves are still greedy and live in underground mountains, elves come from trees and humans are all powerful guys that fuck things up and also a dragon. By that time you've created a HUGE UNIVERSE and can successfully put 20 novels in the game containing said universe that nobody ever reads.
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
Green Scar said:
I remember a MW2 troll |OT| like this.

It got locked and the user got banned. Hmmm.... (disclaimer: this game looks like the absolute fucking worst)

EviLore did the DA:O OT in a similar fashion to this, nothing really to do with the quality of the game.
 
EDarkness said:
I don't consider the new game to be "trolling", honestly. I played the demo and had a lot of fun with it, even played it twice. Just seems so odd for an official thread to basically be a joke.

I agree...this is no place for people who want to discuss the game in a positive light...

Why not make two separate threads or something...
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Green Scar said:
I remember a MW2 troll |OT| like this.

It got locked and the user got banned. Hmmm.... (disclaimer: this game looks like the absolute fucking worst)
That happened because of the bigoted language the OP used in the MW2 thread as opposed to the concept of an OT that isn't a glowing PR marketing piece.

EDarkness said:
I don't consider the new game to be "trolling", honestly. I played the demo and had a lot of fun with it, even played it twice. Just seems so odd for an official thread to basically be a joke.
On this note, this actually fits very well with the spirit of the Marilyn Manson campaign from the first game. Mike Laidlaw argued that it was a fantastic advertisement because it garnered a ton of attention, even if it wasn't all positive. This thread is certainly more memorable and attention getting than the standard format.
 

ArjanN

Member
EDarkness said:
I don't consider the new game to be "trolling", honestly. I played the demo and had a lot of fun with it, even played it twice. Just seems so odd for an official thread to basically be a joke.

All the funnier when the game actually turns out to be good, and is generally well received. Which is the most likely scenario.
 

freddy

Banned
I'm waiting for the OpenGL version and a lot of you guys laughing will have egg on your faces. That's where all the art teams resources are focused. Fuck you all.
 

Mr_Zombie

Member
shinobi602 said:
5)They played the demo and for some reason think the entire game will look like a barren wasteland (Don't really understand this either...it's a 30 minute demo of a 40-50+hour game....I'm 100% positive it will have a variety of locations just like Origins)
The problem is, the city part doesn't look that hot either, and we know that the majority of the game takes place there.
 

pahamrick

Member
Truant said:
Or its audience.

Loved DA:O, probably put more hours into it than any other RPG I've played in the last decade. I would rank it as a great, but flawed game. I'll still probably pick up DA2 at sometime, if only to see all the changes myself (and how they handle the consequences for save importing. I'm expecting a nice letter and codex entries.)
 

Hanmik

Member
shinobi602 said:
Considering it's optional to play the game like that, I don't see why people focus on that so much.

keep fighting the good fight Junior..

0.jpg


try searching for the OP EviLore did for the first game...
 

Lucius86

Banned
I just can't see how people can get excited about DA2. The acting, which for me is one of the most important aspects of a Bioware game, is god-awful! Well, it was from the demo at least.

I wish all |OT| were tongue-in-cheek like this.
 

Ghost

Chili Con Carnage!
ROFL

I didn't realise Carver died if you rolled melee! The sister died when I rolled mage and all I could think was "why did they just kill the only character they'd established a sub plot for?"

To be fair though she deserved to die for not realising she could just run away like a douche and spam fireball until all the Darkspawn were dead.
 

IoCaster

Member
An awesome |OT| and I got some genuinely good laughs out of it.



This pretty much reflects my opinion of the design and intent of this game. I don't fault EAWare for chasing a console audience and hoping to make a quick cash-in off the back of DA:O. It's a business decision and I can see how it makes sense. It's probably good for the bottom line and the console crowd gets a game that's tailor made for their platform of choice. A win-win.

Fortunately, there are other developers making games (Witcher 2, Skyrim, etc,..) that cater more to my preferences and I can happily ignore this crappy port. Another win-win.
 

Piecake

Member
lastplayed said:
Honestly, if "Hawke" is in DAIII then I'm done. Done I tells ya!

I highly doubt he will be since the devs have always stated that what ties Dragon age together is not the main characters, but the world.

Personally, I am holding out hope that Dragon Age 3 has something very similar to Suikoden 3's narrative structure. I think Bioware's choice consequence deal would be really really interesting in that sort of structure. Just think, on your first play through, you could select all of the goody-two-shoes choices and on your second play through do the same, but could get a different experience so long as you played your 3 PCs in a different order.
 

EDarkness

Member
lastplayed said:
Honestly, if "Hawke" is in DAIII then I'm done. Done I tells ya!

All I know is that my warden better make a return at some point in the series. I don't even mind if they give him an actual voice. I don't want to walk into the sunset and never be heard from again...especially after I walked away with Morrigan. There needs to be some resolution to this.
 
Very funny OT, the death of the brother and the A for awesome gif being the highlights. The latter reminded me of another hilarious gif I stumbled on in my lurking pre-approval days when it was revealed Aliens Colonial Marines would have QTE sequences. I'm fairly sure a GAF member made it, can't recall who however.

64gpq8.gif


As for Dragon Age 2, despite my disappointment in the direction they've taken, the demo didn't really dissuade me from picking up the final product. It will be interesting as has been brought up before, if they reverse some of their design decisions come Dragon Age 3 if Dragon Age 2 sales don't meet or exceed Origin's. I guess time will tell on that front, in any case I'm still looking forward to it.
 
Top Bottom