Exclusive: Comic Con Impressions
Jul 26
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View all posts by SteveGarbage (45 Articles)
Steve Garbacz, who chose to embrace his nickname of "garbage" rather than fight it, is a 24-year-old, mild-mannered newspaper reporter by day and an avid gamer by night. He lives in a nothing-to-do rural area, which is dangerously conducive to his gaming habit, and also enjoys creative writing and basketball. He can be reached at steveATgreywardens.com.
A greywardens.com fan writes in about DA2, new DLC from Comic Con
Aakduce, a fan of Greywardens.com (and Dragon Age, of course), was lucky enough to hang out at the San Diego Comic Con the other day. Even better — he had the chance to hang out with BioWare’s Evil Chris Priestly and Mike Laidlaw. Evil Chris, as you may know, is the social voice of all things BioWare, and by extension, Dragon Age; and Mike Laidlaw is the lead designer behind the epic-ness that is the story of Dragon Age 2. Check out Aakduce’s thoughts on the Dragon Age 2 preview — and some of the answers he received when questioning the dynamic duo — below.
“When I got in, Mike was giving a speech about how they were ‘keeping what worked well’ in Dragon Age: Origins — and scrapping the rest. He also outlined the highlights of the game (most of which are already known):
• Story takes place over 10 years
• Hawke (male or female) and family escaped from Lothering just before it was burned to the ground by darkspawn
• Combat is more fast-paced and bloody — BioWare is going for the “300″ Spartan warrior feel here
• You can still use a “Pause and Play” gaming style for strategy
• Casters get dynamic finishers now, like the slow motion kills of warriors in Dragon Age: Origins
• Hawke is fully voice-acted
As soon as I got the chance, I played the demo! Here’s what I discovered:
The story is told by two different narrators who tend to embellish how powerful you really are, and the intro filled out the story of Ostagar (in the same stained glass fashion of DA:O). The game definitely played a bit more like Mass Effect 2, what with the voice acting, as well as in the general gameplay. At one point, I was offered the chance to utterly destroy mobs of darkspawn that were coming at me, or have the mage that was with me (Bethany, I think her name was) blast them. Mage spells in the demo were crushing prison and mind blast — which worked to marvelous effect, of course. The spellbook worked well, but, at least in the demo, there were no tooltips. When I reached the end of the preview, just as it was obvious everyone was going to die, a dragon came out of nowhere and, graciously, killed all of the darkspawn. The dragon then morphed into a familiar old lady with long grey hair — guess who, anyone?
I also had the chance to play a new DLC that is coming out soon. I didn’t get the name, but it was one of the hardest dungeons I have ever played, even on easy — at least in the pre-build that I was playing, anyway. In my chat with Chris Priestly, he told me that BioWare is going to keep making downloadable content for Dragon Age: Origins, and that they are planning to keep the DA:O franchise going for as long as they can — so the changes in Dragon Age 2 aren’t necessarily the end for more traditional roleplayers. There is also likely to be a third full Dragon Age game — and Chris told me that they are not yet done with Morrigan’s story.
I asked Chris about some of the feedback from people who feel that Dragon Age 2 isn’t a real RPG. He said that he felt that players were mostly put off by the fact that they can’t port their character from the first game, and that the only real difference in DA2 over DA:O for roleplayers was that they can’t choose their race. He also mentioned that Dragon Age: Origins only had a timeline of two years, while Dragon Age 2 spans 10 years, and that choosing the path BioWare did with DA2 has given them more ways in which to tell the epic story.
Overall, the game had a great look and feel. I was impressed — and I can’t wait to play it!”
Thanks again to Aakduce for sending in some impressions from Comic Con and letting us know what it was like to get your hands on some of the new content.
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23 comments
Comment by wwww789 on July 26, 2010 at 5:36 pm
yes! this will shut up the doubters
Comment by Brinstar on July 26, 2010 at 6:06 pm
I just want to point out that BioWare explicitly informed everyone going into the demo that they could not talk about what happened inside. Everyone assented to a confidentiality agreement before they could play the demo. If this guy was granted permission from BioWare to talk about it in public, it would be great if this was disclosed in the blog post.
Comment by boooyes on July 26, 2010 at 6:42 pm
"The game definitely played a bit more like Mass Effect 2, what with the voice acting, as well as in the general gameplay"…. yup this is sure to shut those doubters up good….
Comment by wwww789 on July 26, 2010 at 6:51 pm
what i mean is that the fact that Steve likes it might shut them up for a bit
looking back that was probably a pretty stupid sounding comment i apologise
Comment by Elrico Garrett on July 26, 2010 at 7:01 pm
good!!! some hard facts about the gameplay!!
Comment by evergreen on July 26, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Not sure why everyone is in such a tizzy to "shut up the doubters," but hearing that the game plays like ME2, or that BW devs think roleplayers are only concerned about not being able to pick race (as opposed to concerns about VO, dialogue wheel, etc.) does nothing to assuage this doubter.
Comment by stevegarbage on July 26, 2010 at 7:57 pm
This is a mail-in from a fan named Aakduce. I just posted it up onto the site.
Comment by Sad_Gamer on July 26, 2010 at 8:14 pm
I really thought that was odd that VO and the wheel wasn't mentioned, since those have been some of the loudest complaints. I have to assume this is spin.
Comment by Sad_Gamer on July 26, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Uh, how so? It shows that the devs either don't understand the complaints, or are ignoring the most important aspect to minimize their legitimacy. It says that they kept what worked while getting rid of what didn't, and since what they got rid of was all the elements that made it a first person RPG, that's hardly reassuring. They said that they were committed to Origins DLC, but haven't made a singly one that substantially expanded the main game since the two that were created before it was even released, and the next one is combat only–nothing with the immersive story and wonderful characters that was the hallmark of Origins. This is the opposite of encouraging.
Comment by stevegarbage on July 27, 2010 at 2:27 am
Alright folks, I had to delete about a dozen or so comments on the thread. Let's try to be civil to one another and keep responses on topic to the article only. Thank you.
Comment by will the geek on July 27, 2010 at 2:46 am
yes sorry i'll try and make sure it wont happen again
Comment by something random on July 27, 2010 at 2:49 am
it wont happen on this site any way!
Comment by Godzilla Guru on July 27, 2010 at 4:51 am
Finally!!! I mean, yes I also must apologize. It wasn’t my intention to add to the problem. Anyway, everything I’ve heard so far about this game has been more than good enough to keep me interested.
Comment by will the geek on July 27, 2010 at 2:56 am
btw something random: I DONT CARE
so any way im really looking forward to da2 even though i can understand why people are worried about the changes
dont worry change is good they cant just repeat the original game that would be cheating
Comment by sydranark on July 27, 2010 at 3:25 pm
somebody call the waaambulance
Comment by sydranark on July 27, 2010 at 3:26 pm
the article did not reveal much of what we already knew. in fact, it revealed less than gameinformer did in their cover
Comment by something random 2 on July 27, 2010 at 4:04 pm
theyve ruine d the franchise!!! lolollollol
Comment by will the geek on July 27, 2010 at 4:05 pm
this will be awesome!
Comment by pad man on July 27, 2010 at 4:59 pm
meh im not convinced
Comment by em on July 27, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Agreed that change is good, but the differences between the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchise don’t just come down to Sci-Fi vs. Fantasy, but also gameplay. As someone who definitely love SF and looks down on Fantasy I found Mass Effect disappointing (at least the first one). This is mostly because of the dialog wheel. It encourages laziness in characterization and roleplay and actively removes the possibility of subtlety by using summaries and designated wheel positions for particular alignment choices. Ultimately ME seems setup to provide, at most, three play throughs, paragon, renegade and neutral. No flexibility to say play a good character with a bad attitude or one who wants to talk about your feelings.
I feel that Bioware is trying to import their success from ME into DA, but they are forgetting that these are different franchises with different expectations. DA2 might be Madden and Half-Life rolled into one, but no one will buy it since that is not what current fans want and Madden and FPS fans are likely not to touch it since it is a DA title. The only audience in the end will be fans of all three.
Comment by HelenaZ on July 27, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Regarding Brinstar’s comment about the confidentiality agreement, what we were prohibited from doing was *recording video* and *taking photograps* of the demo. We were NOT prohibited from taking notes and discussing the presentation online. In fact, they encouraged us to do so.
Comment by Ladyhawke on July 29, 2010 at 12:27 am
The game did NOT play like ME2. I went along to SDCC and played the demo as well; it played like… some sort of cross between Dragon Age and Kingdom Hearts. I enjoyed it. And besides, the PC version is going to maintain the exact same tactical combat as the first. The action-RPG style, with the addition of being able to pause and assign commands, works much better on a console. It was fast and fun. Does it still feel like Dragon Age? To me, yes.
We played the same area that was shown in the screenshots. It does look better in motion than the pics suggest.
Hawke's voice actor was good (most certainly not like Shepherd!) and Flemeth was still voiced by Kate Mulgrew.
The whole idea of the story being retold in the present is cool, especially when they say the story is probably exaggerated and enhanced. Opens up a lot of potential.
I asked Mike about the length of the game, and he said it'll be a bit shorter than Origins.
Comment by John Ludlow on July 29, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Not sure I entirely agree with Chris P here, but at the same time it's more encouraging than the previous news slice, which gave me the impression is was more rigid (in the same sense that you can't define your character in, say, Assassin's Creed which is definitely not an RPG, but also like you can't define your own character in The Witcher).
Personally, my concerns about it not being a real RPG was more tied to the suggestion that "action" was the thing they were going for this time around – as I suggested on the DA forums, this would be akin to the change Mass Effect went through in its second iteration (which, BTW, made sense for Mass Effect since the RPG aspect was kinda half-baked in ME1, while ME2's slimmed down approach yielded a quality shooter).