16183 réponses à ce sujet

[GardenSnake]

Excited about the Liara dlc too. The Shadow Broker is also an interesting character I'd like to learn more about. I'll give the ME dev team credit, they may be worse at writing scripts and their games may not be on par with Origins, but at least they LISTEN to their fans. Not saying that DA's dev team doesn't, Gaider dropping in every now and again is nice, but it sure as hell doesn't show in their dlc.

[Giggles_Manically]

Dangle some morri, than a paint can comes flying out and smacks the morri clan upside the head.



Before you pass out you can see the crudely written sign GOTCHA on the can.

[adneate]

GardenSnake wrote...

Has anyone seen the 360 avatar DA costumes? I'm pretty excited. Probably going to pick up either Duncan's armor or the Blood Dragon plate. Duncan's beard should have been an option........ Waste of money? Yes. Epic though? Yes. 

Aren't Avatars those stupid little Mii rip offs? And why do you buy costumes for them? I haven't turned my 360 on in quite some time so I'm a bit unaware about exactly what all this stuff is.

[Brockololly]

Swoo wrote...

Not even going to bother with the Hotel DA2 stuff. NDA's will keep a stranglehold on any information to keep it from being worthwhile, and I'm a PC player so I don't care how it plays on an XBOX (personally of course, I'm sure there are those that have been waiting to hear just this...), and if there's one positive of PR buzzwords it's how easy it is to beat them into peoples brains to get easy parroting from them, so I'm sure the whole 'fluidity' and 'artistic stamp' and the like are being bandied about by every would be critic now.

Oh come on, Swoo, you've got to go and be a voice of reason there! Give Laidlaw one of you epic rants about how the Warden/Morrigan romance needs some closure with the Old God Baby!


I'm guessing, we'll see the trailer which will be some Blur CGI affair on August 17th. Then Gamescom starts the next day on August 18th, at which point we may see the demo gameplay they seem to be showing off now which is likely the desert area with Flemeth we keep seeing in th screens. And of course almost all of the demos and gameplay we'll end up seeing will be the console version because they are doing nada with the PC to make it stand out or be optimized (pessimism mode- engage!).

[Swoo]

adneate wrote...

GardenSnake wrote...

Has anyone seen the 360 avatar DA costumes? I'm pretty excited. Probably going to pick up either Duncan's armor or the Blood Dragon plate. Duncan's beard should have been an option........ Waste of money? Yes. Epic though? Yes. 

Aren't Avatars those stupid little Mii rip offs? And why do you buy costumes for them? I haven't turned my 360 on in quite some time so I'm a bit unaware about exactly what all this stuff is.

Just different outfits for your forum avatar, I've never had any interest in spending money on any of that stuff but I do find it neat that they introduced the BW option. I love Duncan's armor, it was so well done.

The Expendables and Tron have been absolutely amazing at Comic Con. Harry Knowles talking about a gym though, that's mind-bleeding irony. But damn, that Tron trailer....wowza. Boba Fett's going to be in the new Forced Unleashed game (squeee), Spider Man 2099 has made an appearance (!), and Bethesda has something huge cooking for the weekend.

I'm surprised they put DA here instead of E3, they are going to have to make some kind of huge splash to get attention with the pure awesome dropping already.

[Swoo]

Brockololly wrote...

Oh come on, Swoo, you've got to go and be a voice of reason there! Give Laidlaw one of you epic rants

The worst part is I simply don't care about the game right now. I don't love it, I don't hate it, it just exists and I shrug and move on to the cooler things right now. All their marketing and PR speak and promises has just brought out apathy, whereas a ton of other companies are starting to drop information about their upcoming products that have me on the edge of my seat. Hell, the Warhammer 40K games have me more interested right now, I never thought I'd see the day.

[Brockololly]

To further dampen the mood, we have this interview with Zeschuk where he drops some gems like this one:

A lot of the RPG elements from Mass Effect 1 were streamlined for Mass Effect 2. Was this done to attract a wider audience?

Well I think it comes back to one of our main goals at BioWare: that we always try to improve the experience. It’s interesting, because one of the things we knew right off the bat that we wanted to do for the sequel to Mass Effect, was keep the same level of detail, but make it a bit easier to access. It wasn’t so much a case that we were going for a wider audience – we just wanted make a better game, which was easier to pick and play and enjoy. The potential to bring Mass Effect to a wider audience was a  secondary consideration. The key thing for us was to make the whole thing  better.


Looking at the success this system has had in Mass Effect 2, will BioWare look at making the RPG elements in games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic and the forthcoming Dragon Age sequel more streamlined too?

Yeah, to a certain degree. Like I said, we want to make each game better than the last and to a certain degree, the easier we can make the gameplay while maximising the depth of the game's detail, is something to aim for. We announced Dragon Age 2 a short while ago and of course we've been talking about Star Wars: The Old Republic for a while now – and people have had a chance to play it and probably see what some of our objectives are with the game. We try to do a lot of focus testing and usability testing with our fans. We're always trying to make our games as fun and easily usable as possible.

I know you want games to have a broad appeal, but come on BioWare, you're not fooling anyone with this "streamlining" rubbish. If you're going to totally castrate any RPG elements from your games in the future, just have the decency to say so and just say you're dumbing things down because you're catering to the casual crowd and The Bros now.

I'm sorry, but there is no way that you can say that ME2 had the same depth or breadth of RPG elements as ME1 but was just easier to access. Thats just not true. Instead of fixing what was not working in ME1 like the inventory, they just got rid of it. Thats my fear for DA2- instead of fixing things that didn't work perfectly, they'll just ditch stuff and throw in some "review proof" feature thats so dumbed down its impossible to screw up in its implementation.

Modifié par Brockololly, 23 juillet 2010 - 03:34 .

[Ash Wind]

Swoo wrote...

The worst part is I simply don't care about the game right now. I don't love it, I don't hate it, it just exists and I shrug and move on to the cooler things right now. All their marketing and PR speak and promises has just brought out apathy, whereas a ton of other companies are starting to drop information about their upcoming products that have me on the edge of my seat. Hell, the Warhammer 40K games have me more interested right now, I never thought I'd see the day.

Great call Swoo….

The hype machine is just over the top absurd. It would be mildly amusing as a parody of a clownish ad campaign; unfortunately, they appear to be trying to be taken seriously.

I remain very underwhelmed. It started by hearing the particulars of the uninteresting Timmy Hawke and has spiral downhill since then. I keep coming back here, hoping for something to pique my interest, and yet there is nothing, and I find myself becoming less and less disappointed in that fact.  

Modifié par Ash Wind, 23 juillet 2010 - 03:37 .

[Addai]

Brockololly wrote...

I know you want games to have a broad appeal, but come on BioWare, you're not fooling anyone with this "streamlining" rubbish. If you're going to totally castrate any RPG elements from your games in the future, just have the decency to say so and just say you're dumbing things down because you're catering to the casual crowd and The Bros now.

They're not fooling anyone with "we just wanted to make it better," either.  Better= small tweaks, not major rehauls.

[Swoo]

To be absolutely fair, I don't think 'casual' is such a bad thing by itself. There are many products you can make with a wide appeal or easy usage that still turn out to be great media, so the internet rallying cry 'Catering to casuals!', 'casualized!', and the like usually don't do much to me.



My personal catch is do not try to sell something to me as gold that you told me was **** yesterday. Everything that has come out about DA2 so far has a corresponding 'No, we wouldn't do that. That sucks.' moment in the lead up to Origins. Sometimes I do feel sorry for the company men having everything they say be put under a microscope, but when you clearly define something and then smash it away in the next breath, well then...what should I really take from this?



I find it especially funny (and do you have these quotes Brock? You're golden for this kind of thing.) that they actually took backhanded shots at the 'other' company for making games that 'aren't really a RPG', and now are doing the same exact thing and telling us it's natural progress. Doubletalk, it just wears me down.



So yeah, whatever. Plenty of time until release to go either way, but right now Chambers and Co. are living up to every promise they made to me, and I'm absolutely dying to get my hands on their games.

[phaonica]

Brockololly wrote...

To further dampen the mood, we have this interview with Zeschuk where he drops some gems like this one:

A lot of the RPG elements from Mass Effect 1 were streamlined for Mass Effect 2. Was this done to attract a wider audience?

Well I think it comes back to one of our main goals at BioWare: that we always try to improve the experience. It’s interesting, because one of the things we knew right off the bat that we wanted to do for the sequel to Mass Effect, was keep the same level of detail, but make it a bit easier to access. It wasn’t so much a case that we were going for a wider audience – we just wanted make a better game, which was easier to pick and play and enjoy. The potential to bring Mass Effect to a wider audience was a  secondary consideration. The key thing for us was to make the whole thing  better.


Looking at the success this system has had in Mass Effect 2, will BioWare look at making the RPG elements in games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic and the forthcoming Dragon Age sequel more streamlined too?

Yeah, to a certain degree. Like I said, we want to make each game better than the last and to a certain degree, the easier we can make the gameplay while maximising the depth of the game's detail, is something to aim for. We announced Dragon Age 2 a short while ago and of course we've been talking about Star Wars: The Old Republic for a while now – and people have had a chance to play it and probably see what some of our objectives are with the game. We try to do a lot of focus testing and usability testing with our fans. We're always trying to make our games as fun and easily usable as possible.

I know you want games to have a broad appeal, but come on BioWare, you're not fooling anyone with this "streamlining" rubbish. If you're going to totally castrate any RPG elements from your games in the future, just have the decency to say so and just say you're dumbing things down because you're catering to the casual crowd and The Bros now.

Ah, be fair now. They can't just say "our last game really appealed to smart and thoughtful people, but there weren't enough of them, so now we have to dumb it down so that we can reach a wider audience."  I can see them trying to fix the initial difficulty hurdle for beginners (I personally liked the challenge, but can imagine that most people wouldn't bother). I also would rather move away from the pause and play style and rely more on setting tactics and playing in real time. I didn't like Awakening's conversation system as much, but I honestly don't know if it was the mechanics or the lack of romances, or the less intense story that made me feel not as close to my companions. I don't like the buzzwords and the hype, either, they're purposely worded to get people worked up, and I'm not ready to write the whole thing off just yet because of hype.

[Brockololly]

Swoo wrote..

My personal catch is do not try to sell something to me as gold that you told me was **** yesterday. Everything that has come out about DA2 so far has a corresponding 'No, we wouldn't do that. That sucks.' moment in the lead up to Origins. Sometimes I do feel sorry for the company men having everything they say be put under a microscope, but when you clearly define something and then smash it away in the next breath, well then...what should I really take from this?

Right- thats my point. WIth ME1 it was clearly trying to be a shooter, so ME2 they "amped up" the shooter elements and neutered the RPG stuff. It pissed off some, but it was never a hardcore RPG in the first place- it was always a hybrid.

With DA however, they bashed it over our heads that with Origins it was a return to the old school gameplay and feel of Baldur's Gate RPGs. That was Origins' calling card and it did it well- except on consoles apparently. So now they're changing up everything because Orgins didn't work as good on the consoles. And maybe I'm just skeptical or cynical, but that means to me that the console minded changes will simply be ported over to the PC too, due to the short dev cycle.

Swoo wrote..
I find it especially funny (and do you have these quotes Brock? You're golden for this kind of thing.) that they actually took backhanded shots at the 'other' company for making games that 'aren't really a RPG', and now are doing the same exact thing and telling us it's natural progress. Doubletalk, it just wears me down.

What quotes? I could probably dig them up- more specifics? BioWare likes to bash JRPGs and just about everyone else it seems, hell they like bashing Origins now too.

phaonica wrote...
I don't like the buzzwords and the hype, either, they're purposely worded to get people worked up, and I'm not ready to write the whole thing off just yet because of hype.

Oh I know, but I just wish they'd stay true to what made Origins great- maybe they have- but it sure as hell looks like they're making Dragon Effect 2 and not the sequel to Origins.

All told, there is one sure way I can have my faith restored in BioWare- release a quality expansion pack that lets the Warden get some closure with Morrigan. Do that and I'll gladly pick up DA2. Most likely I'll get DA2 anyway, but its far from a guarantee, as all the stuff coming out does nothing to get me more excited or optimistic. Laidlaw and the devs might talk the talk in reassuring fans, but as of yet we have no clue if they can walk the walk. I don't normally focus on the PR/Marketing garbage but the tone of the DA2 stuff is the exact tone and buzzwords they used with ME2- and THATS what concerns me. ME2 was a great game but far from a great RPG.

And with that cheery piece of optimism, we have this IGN preview of DA2 from Comic Con. The details don't sound that great- the combat sounds very hack and slash, the graphics only described as "fine" and the dialogue wheel has only 3 choices ("good, nasty or badass")...But just reading that article, its terribly written, so I don't know how much weight it should even be given. And yet BioWare puts a ton of effort into changing their games based on review scores written by people like that at IGN? *sigh* Just because a game has a high metacritic doesn't mean its good...



Hahaha...I just had a horrible idea- in the IGN preview it mentions there is already a slot for "Downloadable Content" on the main menu. What if any potential Morrigan closure DLC was the first stand alone day 1 DLC for DA2? Thus forcing anyone who wanted closure there with your imported Warden to need to buy DA2....

Modifié par Brockololly, 23 juillet 2010 - 04:44 .

[Swoo]

Ah for the love of God.

The character models have a subtle comic book look to them, which we liked.
O...k...

Different attacks are mapped to the X, Y, and B buttons of your
controller (we were playing on an Xbox 360). Hawk, the hero of the
game, had a typical sword swipe mapped to X, a thrust mapped to Y, and a
twirl that would take down all the enemies around him mapped to B. By
holding the right trigger you can access a second set of attacks, so it
seems you'll have six moves available to you at a time. Each move has a
recharge time, so you can't just keep mashing the X button to chop
through enemies.


So they just turned it into 2002's Lord of the Rings game on XBOX. Fantastic. I'm hoping this is just poor reporting and it's the MMO-cooldown system used in Origins, but it sounds like a normal slasher game with the This button Thrusts, This button Chops, This button... rubbish.

a little too hectic you can still stop it and issue commands to your
party by holding the left trigger. This ability seems to work much like
the squad commands in Mass Effect.

But it's not Mass Effect with swords, really.

Each choice is represented by an icon that indicates whether or it's a "good," "nasty," or "badass" choice.

Badass, yes, yes, of course. Sparta.

[GardenSnake]

adneate wrote...

GardenSnake wrote...

Has anyone seen the 360 avatar DA costumes? I'm pretty excited. Probably going to pick up either Duncan's armor or the Blood Dragon plate. Duncan's beard should have been an option........ Waste of money? Yes. Epic though? Yes. 

Aren't Avatars those stupid little Mii rip offs? And why do you buy costumes for them? I haven't turned my 360 on in quite some time so I'm a bit unaware about exactly what all this stuff is.

Esentially yes, ripping off the wii but hey, ignorance is bliss. Plus I'm a closeted nintendo hater so ya. :innocent:

[Brockololly]

Swoo wrote...

Ah for the love of God...

But wait! Theres more!

Zhadow wrote...

I went to the Comic and Video game panel today as well as later on in the day I went to try out the Dragon Age II demo. I was more excited about the next "unnamed" DLC they had set up  before the hands on demo or Dragon Age II. It was a adventure that is  set up after awakenings. The designer of it said it was meant for the  gamer that wants a challenge. I found it to be rather fun, with what  seems to be a unique story. One of the companions that you have is a  Golem, with the other being a Dwarf, that came along with the PC mage  that you got to use as part of the demo.

I may not be a good  judge as far as the difficulty level of it goes thou, as the other folks trying it were dying in droves, while I just found it difficult,  especially since the only crowd control spell that seemed to be of use was Cone of Cold.

My impressions of Dragon Age II was more... restrained. Although the graphics do indeed kick some serious ass, the game play leaves a lot to be desired. One of the things they wanted wasthe ability to have more "control" over the game, my impression of that game design "enhancement" was that the game was less tactical then  DA:O/A, in fact the combat seemed to be trivial at best, and calling it trivial is overstating it.

Your character feels like a powerhouse with one sweep of his sword killing dozens of dark spawn at a time...  just... does not feel right.

The boss fight they show you did not have the epic feel of the first boss fight against the ogre at ostagar  from DA:O, in fact it felt more like fighting a slightly stronger regular mob.

Zhadow wrote...

The mage party member was also incredibly good, I just did not bother to switch over and left it to auto-attack.   Never felt a need to micromange at all.  Other folks did use the mage  and it seemed to also wipe out monsters in droves as well.  DA:O you had a party of 4 taking on a Ogre and it felt like a epic fight, in this  you have a party of two fighting HORDES of darkspawn as well as a Ogre boss and it felt... trivial.

Modifié par Brockololly, 23 juillet 2010 - 05:01 .

[Swoo]

So...it IS going to be street-sweeper combat. ****, someone told me that but I didn't think Bioware would seriously short bus out the combat that badly.

[adneate]

@Brock



Sigh . . . and here I thought we moved past these issues . . . guess not.

[Brockololly]

Swoo wrote...

So...it IS going to be street-sweeper combat. ****, someone told me that but I didn't think Bioware would seriously short bus out the combat that badly.

It was the console version, so maybe just maybe the PC is better? *sigh* I'm not holding my breath- we'll be jumping around auto-killing everything because we're HAWKE! it seems....poo to that I say- poo on you BioWare.


@adneate:

No no..right when I think I'm ok with DA2 they throw some new smelly heap of info at us that just....smells badly. I REALLY want to like this game, but its getting to the point where the only thing thats keeping me interested is the story. Maybe Gaider should just write a novelization of it and I'll be ok with that....I'm just more looking forward to the DLC and another Origins expack than DA2 right now, thats for sure.

I'm not a vengeful person, but IF (and thats a big if) DA2 ends up playing like ME with swords, I hope it fails horribly. If for nothing else to get BioWare's head on straight that not every game needs to be a pile of homogenous ME inspired gameplay mechanics and design decsions. Keep your ME in ME and leave DA in DA.

Modifié par Brockololly, 23 juillet 2010 - 05:10 .

[Swoo]

Brockololly wrote...

Swoo wrote...

So...it IS going to be street-sweeper combat. ****, someone told me that but I didn't think Bioware would seriously short bus out the combat that badly.

It was the console version, so maybe just maybe the PC is better? *sigh* I'm not holding my breath- we'll be jumping around auto-killing everything because we're HAWKE! it seems....poo to that I say- poo on you BioWare.

Everything I'm hearing screams this.

[Brockololly]

Swoo wrote...



Everything I'm hearing screams this.

You know I dug out my old Xbox a couple weeks ago to play Return of the King with my little cousin and its a pure hack and slash. Thinking on it now, I can see DA2 playing very similar to that on consoles- the controls sound eerily the same....

[ximena]

adneate wrote...

@Brock

Sigh . . . and here I thought we moved past these issues . . . guess not.

Hurr. *crosses fingers for the PC version combat gameplay*

[Brockololly]

More info...

Zhadow wrote...

Brockololly wrote...

Is it a Morrigan DLC?!? *sigh* I'm looking forward to Origins DLC or maybe one last expansion pack more than DA2 right now...

Any thoughts on the conversation system? And how did the environment look? Was Flemeth in the demo at all? Thanks.

Was NOT a Morrigan DLC, but I did not care... it was fun, and the adventure was engaging, I did not get too far into the puzzle of the initial  rooms before I went into the demo for DAII but I was already "into" it.  It was a expansion for DA:A that you supposedly can import your DA:A  character into.

Conversation system for DA 2, was exactly as they have stated already, you get a choice of how you want to approach the conversation... either "Kick ass", "Friendly". "Conservative" etc.  Only two conversation points in the demo, so no real comprehensive way of  really evaluating it as of yet.  It was interesting that you could have  PARTY members try and solve a problem instead of doing it yourself thou.

The screenshots DO NOT DO IT JUSTICE., the backgrounds look MUCH better  then the screenshots.  Flemeth WAS in the demo.  The model does not look like her... at all, but they seem to have used the same voice actor
that they used for the original Flemeth.

Modifié par Brockololly, 23 juillet 2010 - 05:16 .

[Axekix]

Brockololly wrote...

But wait! Theres more!

Zhadow wrote...

I went to the Comic and Video game panel today as well as later on in the day I went to try out the Dragon Age II demo. I was more excited about the next "unnamed" DLC they had set up  before the hands on demo or Dragon Age II. It was a adventure that is  set up after awakenings. The designer of it said it was meant for the  gamer that wants a challenge. I found it to be rather fun, with what  seems to be a unique story. One of the companions that you have is a  Golem, with the other being a Dwarf, that came along with the PC mage  that you got to use as part of the demo.

What?  A post DA:A DLC with none of the old cast members people were so curious about?  What's the point? 

This whole "one and done" approach Bioware is taking to the supporting cast is kind of getting annoying.  Awakening at least had the letters from Leli/Zev to keep the continuity (once they were patched in that is)... but this takes place after that, and we get an all new cast again?  What reason would Alistair/Leli/Zev have for not being around this time?

[phaonica]

Brockololly wrote...

phaonica wrote...
I don't like the buzzwords and the hype, either, they're purposely worded to get people worked up, and I'm not ready to write the whole thing off just yet because of hype.

Oh I know, but I just wish they'd stay true to what made Origins great- maybe they have- but it sure as hell looks like they're making Dragon Effect 2 and not the sequel to Origins.

The third person perspective alone fundamentally changes the game, I agree. I can't imagine what the feedback would be like if the Elder Scrolls series suddenly decided to have a defined hero instead of a player-hero, but then the Elder Scrolls series has been in the first person from the very beginning. Baldur's Gate was not in the first person, and neither was Neverwinter Nights or Kotor. I agree that I don't like them saying the silent-first-person perspective is "dated", and I really don't like them saying that the "traditional" style they claimed to go back to is now somehow something that we should get over. I wouldn't mind it so much if they had just said they wanted to try out another perspective, which quite frankly is the perspective that most of their games used and succeeded with.

If they said that the new game was "better" than Origins, there are people who would complain that they were implying that Origins was crap. If they said the new game was "trying something new and different", people would say that they liked Origins the way it was. And if they said they were going to use the same mechanics with a new story, some people would wonder why they weren't going to try to fix the clunkier mechanics, and no one is going to agree on what those mechanics are.

All told, there is one sure way I can have my faith restored in BioWare- release a quality expansion pack that lets the Warden get some closure with Morrigan. Do that and I'll gladly pick up DA2. Most likely I'll get DA2 anyway, but its far from a guarantee, as all the stuff coming out does nothing to get me more excited or optimistic. Laidlaw and the devs might talk the talk in reassuring fans, but as of yet we have no clue if they can walk the walk. I don't normally focus on the PR/Marketing garbage but the tone of the DA2 stuff is the exact tone and buzzwords they used with ME2- and THATS what concerns me. ME2 was a great game but far from a great RPG.

Oh yeah, this type and quality of expansion would pretty much negate any misgivings I have about DA2. I really haven't thought the quality of their DAO expansions or DLC have measured up to the original game, but DAO itself was really damn good, I think even better than Oblivion.

[adneate]

Axekix wrote...

This whole "one and done" approach Bioware is taking to the supporting cast is kind of getting annoying.  Awakening at least had the letters from Leli/Zev to keep the continuity (once they were patched in that is)... but this takes place after that, and we get an all new cast again?  What reason would Alistair/Leli/Zev have for not being around this time?

Well Leliana has to do the Grand Cleric's laundry so you know that'll take a while and Zevran had to see a man about a horse and Alistair had to wash Arl Eamon's beard, so they're all busy and stuff.