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[Archereon]

...and a shift away from more hardcore RPG nature of its predecessor...

Here's another statement, this time from the G4 Dragon Age Preview.  Its in gross conflict with the statements devs give on the fourms regarding the gameplay changes between Dragon Age 1 and Dragon Age 2, just like practically other source besides Bioware itself...I'm starting to wonder if this is an intentional marketing ploy...
While that's fine and good, if more than a bit dishonest, if your just giving the impression to every reviewer who demos your game that Dragon Age 2 is moving towards Hack and Slash gameplay for marketing purposes (draw in the twitch gameplay and Mass Effect fans, while depending on your loyal fans to buy it anyway and be pleasantly surpirsed), I'm beginning to wonder if we on the forums are the one's who are being lied to...Seriously, every reviewer who's demoed DA2 (that I can think of) has been claiming that the game has been "streamlined" (read: dumbed down).  Some of them even called it an outright Hack and Slash, and that's starting to worry me more and more as Bioware seemingly refuses to ask for corrections.

TL;DR: Why the hell is Bioware content to have every single reviewer they allowed to demo the game call Dragon Age 2 a hack and slash, claim its been dumbed down for the greater good of casuals (no offense to casual gamers, its just the way certain reviewers talk...), or even go so far as to say that Bioware is finally moving away from the dreaded RPG genre (yes, one person actually said that.)?

[Mike Laidlaw]

Archereon wrote...

The problem there is that it's going to force you to micromanage one character, and one character only, unlike in DA:O where you controlled the whole party...Which will now be useless, barring absurd health bonuses to NPCs, thanks to either

A. Godawful AI regarding the active dodges

or

B. No AI at all in active dodges

Or, C. They got it wrong and there is no active dodge.

In fact, there was a very clear rule about active dodging and defenses put down in my first combat design doc that said I believed that active dodges would fail in a party-based game, because the player would feel as if he could only play the "tank" of the party in order to have maximum effectiveness.

[Mike Laidlaw]

Archereon wrote...
If an exec decides a change needs to happen, Laidlaw has to either comply with him or explain why its not feasible.  Ultimately the people REALLY in charge (board of directors and other execs) can meddle however much they want with the "lead designer's" vision.

In theory, yes, but there comes a point at which something has to be implemented, and it's implemented by my team. Were I not on board with the way a game was being made, I have more than thirty highly competent people who could be a force of extreme subversion. Eventually the tension between the game I was trying to make and the game that was being demanded would reach a point where something would have to change, and frankly, the game would probably be pushed back or cancelled as a result.

Of course, that would be highly unprofessional, and I'll be damned before I let something like that happen. Down that path lies the death of careers. And rightly so.

Thus far, EA and Bioware as an organization have been extremely supportive of Dragon Age II. To date, I cannot think of a single decision that has been changed as a result of pressure from outside the team. I can think of hundreds that come directly from the team, from the leadership to design to art to QA; it's not very hard to have a voice on the Dragon Age team. If you walk into one office, you can speak to the executive producer, lead artist, lead designer and lead programmer all at once, and we're more than happy to hear it. And frankly, if an executive had an idea that would make the game better, I'd want to hear it too.

But the changes to the game, in terms of feel, visuals, combat responsiveness? Those are all coming from the Dragon Age team. And all the stuff that still feels the same? That's us too.

[Mike Laidlaw]

Archereon wrote...

Who knows?  He could've taken it for the money, I don't know enough about this guy to make a judgement on that, though I do know most people don't care enough about games to sacrifice a significant pay raise, its the decision I'd make honestly.

Then you certainly don't know enough about me. About the only claim you could make about me that would be more incorrect than "he doesn't care about games" would be "growing up on a farm had no influence on him."

[Mike Laidlaw]

Saibh wrote...
I'm pretty positive I could write a preview for DA2, having never played the demo, that would be both more informative and more accurate than almost anything else we have.

You have to cut some of the previewers some slack. They rarely get as much time or as many questions as they would want, and they often see a dozen games in a day when they attend certain events.

In general, though, I believe that the innaccuracies come from one very clear source: DA II does not "feel" like DA:O when you first play it. It's faster. It feels like you're actually in control of your characters, not issuing orders that will eventually be carried out. This is, in my mind, a success, because while not all of the previewers pause the game, or take a look at the more tactical side of things, they can feel and understand the changes in their bones.

Every time they leap to a game like Ninja Gaiden, a game that has functionally no resemblance to DA II that I can see, I take it as a compliment. I know it bothers some people here to hear that kind of comparison made, but such is life. There will be more details coming. The podcast was a first step. More soon!

[Mike Laidlaw]

Utoryo wrote...

Mike, thanks a lot for these great clarifications. One thing I'm curious about is the difficulty level for the demos. I assume it's the DA:O equivalent of Easy? Certainly you wouldn't *need* a lot of pausing/strategy in DA:O at that difficulty either, and if it was faster paced you'd be tempted not to bother.

Yep, tuned to easy.

Anything you can tell us about what difficulty options are planned at this stage? Here's hoping for something a bit more extreme than Nightmare after completing the game in Hard/Nightmare

No info at this point, no. Sorry.

[Mike Laidlaw]

Perfect-Kenshin wrote...

lol, yeah right. I don't question that you care about these games, but if it came between your salary and your vision of the game, you'd go with the salary in a heart beat. DAO sold more than any other Bioware game, hence greater expectations and pay for DA2. I don't know all that much about you, but I know you aren't insane.

I know you don't mean it to be, but you have no idea how insulting that is. I can get another job, integrity is a little harder to come by.

[Mike Laidlaw]

Brockololly wrote...
But how is the PC version coming along? It seems like Gamescom was the last time we really heard anything specifically about the PC version as all of these conventions demo the console version.

Good! I'm playing it right now, in fact, and being reminded just how much I adore shield bash.

It's almost unseemly.

[Mike Laidlaw]

andar91 wrote...

You've mentioned in the past that the difficulty of DA2 unfolds as the game progresses from easier to harder.  The other day, somebody made a great post (unfortunately, I can't remember who), and I"m going to parapharase it here.  "I don't have a problem with a gradually unfolding difficulty curve, if that actually happens.  I played ME2 and kept waiting for it to get more difficult and it never did."  He said something like that.  Although I can't speak for Mass Effect, I thought this was a good point.  I think a big fear here is that that upswing in difficulty won't be steady or significant enough and too much of the game (I know, that's rather subjective) will require little tactical thought, pausing, etc....  Could you maybe explain the team's approach on handling this?  A little?  Please?

A mix of automatic difficulty balancing with an awareness that fights need to consist of more than just "more guys" to be more difficult. As the player gains abilities, and gains experience with the game's systems, they become capable of dealing with more complex combat scenarios, and in order to prevent player boredom, you need to keep those scenarios more complex.

In Origins we didn't have enough variety in enemy behaviors to really ramp as smoothly as I would have liked. We've taken steps to rectify that this time around by introducing not just enemies with new abilities, but some new, challenging behaviors.

[Mike Laidlaw]

crimzontearz wrote...
ok, apparently right after the shield Bash after an enemy is on the ground the warrior performs the equivalent of an "overwhelm" by jumping on the downed fow and wailing on him/her....which may I say sounds very satisfying

Well, kind of. It's a function of the ability to make closing attacks. In Origins by the time your warrior got themselves lined up to follow up on a shield bash, the enemy was already standing. In DA II, the warrior can smoothly followup and continue attacking the downed foe.

[Mike Laidlaw]

And, crimson, I don't have any news on NG+ for you.