This is a short summery of what we Swedes saw at the Bioware (EA) booth and presentation at Gamex:
Dragon Age 2 Demo (played on an Xbox):
Bioware’s booth (ridiculously small I might add, only one xbox!) contained the same demo as always, the exaggerated Varric-tale and the ‘real’ flight from Lothering with all the included cut-scenes and
whatnot. Not much news here but I did get to try out the controls and combat.
I, being used to the PC version of Dragon Age Origins and this being the second or third time I ever held an
xbox-controller, found the controls to flow fairly smoothly and logically (i.e. moving around and moving the camera with the sticks etc.). I can’t remember too much of the demo, but I do remember combat felt like it had a certain pace and flow which Origins sadly lacked, making it a lot more interesting and in a way more strategic. I have a feeling the harder fights on a difficulty where you can actually die will be quite hectic and require your fullest attention and careful planning.
The Presentation:
While their booth was (in my opinion!) fairly uneventful and uninteresting the presentation two Bioware employees
(can’t remember their names or their position right now, perhaps another Swede who attended could shed some light on this issue) held Friday the 5th afternoon. This presentation contained two parts, first a powerpoint
presentation of the game and second a very interesting demonstration of a quest in Kirkwall played on an Xbox.
The powerpoint was basically just a summery of what can be found on the Dragon Age 2 website accompanied by a few (with emphasis in few) screenshots at least I had never seen before, even so this powerpoint was fairly void of new information and therefore slightly dull to someone like me who regularly checks their website and these forums (not saying they should’ve left it out as I’m sure it benefited those who do not).
Now this demonstration is what made me feel I got my 20-euros fee worth of money, I’ll try to separate this into a section with spoilers about the quest and one focused on the mechanics and combat I
saw.
The Quest [SPOILERS!],
The demo started with Hawke, accompanied by Varric, Bethany and the templar’s wife (what’s her name again?!), meeting up with Isabela on (in?) some sort of town square. She thanks Hawke for showing up to this meeting, apparently she is to meet with someone who had an interest or owned the cargo her ship was carrying when it was smashed to timbers but fears it is a setup. Moments later a few armed ruffians show up claiming to want her head and battle quickly starts.
Hawke & Co helps Isabela fight her way to a chantry (might actually have been a tavern or inn, we never got a good look at it) where she confronts the man she was too meet in the first place. Turns out the ‘valuable cargo’ was slaves and the man is not happy about her loosing them, some quick conversation follows (the guy playing just picked the aggressive response, so I’m guessing this lead straight to combat) and Isabela hurls a dagger (the very same dagger-throw that can be seen in the Rise to Power trailer) which hits and kills one of the man’s guards. More guards quickly spill out of neighbouring rooms and a huge fight ensues.
After the man and his lackeys are dealt with Isabela thanks Hawke and tells him where she’s rent a room and he can find her, so my guess is this is some sort of ‘recruitment’ type mission for Isabela. We also get a quick look on the party selection screen, which looked more or less the same as the Origins one but with updated graphics and shiny things and contained no Carver.
[NO MORE SPOILERS!]
Mechanics,
I’ll really try my best to avoid spoilers in this section of the text.
First I must say the difficulty was turned way down (I’m guessing Dragon Age 2’s own variant of ‘Easy’) and
damage-floaters (the numbers above thing’s heads) were turned off. The person playing mainly controlled Hawke and seemed to think the computer did a good enough job handling the other characters most of the time.
We saw a lot of combat in the disappointingly short playthrough, remember this was on an Xbox and I played
Origins on a PC, we got to see a mage, three rogues (two melee ones and one archer with a crossbow) and a warrior (sword & board). Combat seemed a lot more highpaced than in Origins (no more old person shuffling towards your target!) and the different combatants was rushing into the fray and wildly stabbing their way to glory.
The two melee rogues (one being Hawke the other being an NPC which later turned into a companion) seemed two share abilities so I’m guessing the NPC special skillset is only for their specialisation, and the attacks I saw (might’ve been more that I missed) were, a smoke bomb that disoriented (think stunned until damaged) a large group of foes and a quick step thing that ‘teleported’ them behind their current target. The other rogue was happily shooting things far away from the field of battle and I couldn’t make out any distinctive abilities.
The warrior (we were shown about 20 seconds of combat from her point of view) had the good old shield bash but now quite quickly rushed on top of the defenceless foe lying on the ground and started hacking away.
We were shown slightly more from the mage, it appeared this particular mage seemed to be mainly focused on firespells, we saw a fireball (like Origin’s but prettier and MORE FIRE!), an inferno (exactly like the Origin’s one but instant cast and looked more like fireballs raining out of the sky nuking the area) and a flame-wave thing (can be seen in the Rise to Power trailer and in the early concept art).
One nice feature I noticed was that whenever you selected an AoE (area of effect, think EXPLOSIONS!) spell or
ability (like fireball or inferno) the game automatically paused and gave you the zoomed-out top-view and the targeting circle for the spell.
We also got to see a loot window and party selection screen, both looked pretty much the same as Origins.
Sorry for this massive wall of text, but I hope someone found it an interesting and enlightening read.
TL:DR version, Dragon Age 2 looks awesome.
EDIT: Please try to keep spoilers out of comments for everyone's pleasure!
EDIT2: Fixed the formatting that these forums apperently broke when I copied my post from a word document
Modifié par Gashington, 11 novembre 2010 - 09:43 .
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