 |
| Already you can see how the enemies are look different with the new art style |
A mixture of press reviews and the scouring of the public forums lead the developers to focus on three main things in Dragon Age 2: The visuals, the combat and the story. As far as the visuals go, they were still pretty good (although much better on PC) but they weren't as good as they could be, especially looking at Mass Effect 2. Bioware also came to the conclusion that their art style was a bit too generic, and so a combination of an improved engine and a new unifying art direction will hopefully make the game look a lot better than its predecessor. Looking at the build they showed us, personally I think that ME2 still has the upper hand, but it is looking better, especially on the PC. I also think I prefer the previous art style, but whatever.
We never had much of an issue with combat, but it seems other people did. Dragon Age had a more strategic/tactical approach to battle as opposed to the simple hack'n'slash. According to their feedback research, whilst you could plan out your moves and come up with a strategy, some apparently felt that this was 'too' good. Bioware's David Silverman specifically quotes an instance were a player mentioned how, having queued up a series of moves in a battle plan, they then used the next few minutes to have a toilet break. This is evidently not something Bioware wanted to happen.
The effect is even more pronounced on the PC, with its improved tactics management. Personally, we never had this problem, but then we never really queued up stuff that far in advance – things changed in combat, even in Dragon Age. Still, Bioware have looked at the mechanics and made subtle improvements. There's still the tactical element, still the planning you can do, but they've also adapted it so that (should you wish) you can just go in and do it all yourself in true hack'n'slash style. Silverman summed it up by saying “we wanted you to still be able to think like a general, but also to fight like a Spartan”.
Last but not least, the story: this has always been one of Bioware's strong points, so it was surprising to see them talk about the story as a main focus. To be fair though, the points they themselves raised were perfectly valid. Dragon Age II is going to have a framed narrative, a la The Usual Suspects. For those of you unfamiliar with the term or the film, a framed narrative is simply a story told by another story.
 |
| That gritty goryness is still there, with maybe a bit more grandstanding |
For Bioware, this new narrative dynamic has two key advantages: The first is that it allows them to have a longer time-frame, allows them to do more with the flow of the story and dip in and out of time, and generally just increase the amount of flexibility they have. The second is to do with the choices: even though Dragon Age's choice system was very well done, both in terms of execution and content, you didn't see the affect of most of those choices until the end of the game.
Now, with this new framed narrative and the amount of flexibility available, you can see these choices sooner. The original Dragon Age spanned a period of 1 year to 1 ½ year, whilst Dragon Age II will be spanning a full ten years as it charts the rise of your character, Hawk, and what happens to him.
Most of the other improvements we noticed were related in some way to these core three concepts. The dialogue wheel has been tweaked so that it now carries emotional sub-text with the choices. Silverman quoted the popular saying that Email is a poor form of communication due to the fact that you can't read emotions, and he has a point. You don't really know the effect of some of the options (unless they're really obvious) until after the fact. Now, this 'emotional' wheel gives hints in the form of icons that are supposed to represent emotions, or stances, or something that really helps you see what the choice is meant to achieve. A small touch, but one that we think will make the cinematic experience that much more engaging.
Combat is looking more responsive, again to quote Silverman they wanted the action-rpg element to feel like “as soon as you pressed a button, something awesome happened”, evidently using the formulate Button Pressing = Awesome. Other minor touches have been improved as well, such as death kills. In Dragon Age, whenever you performed a finishing mêlée attack on a big opponent, you did a special kill move. These were always very nice and gave a satisfying epic finish to touch battles, but they were limited only to mêlée. Now, at least magic attacks have also been given death moves.
We got to see a bit of the framed narrative in action as well, as this was mainly a story demo being shown at GamesCom. The demo opened up with a really epic struggle full of heroism and 300-style ownage, and then you're suddenly wrenched out of it and presented with two people arguing over the facts. “Did that really happen?” “No, but that's the legend.” The game then continues to re-play that sequence you just saw, but with what 'actually' occurred (although, much like The Usual Suspects, how can you tell what's real and what isn't?). It's certainly the bit we're most excited about, and the only problem we see is repetition. Even though when you replay through events you've just gone through things are subtly different, it is overall the same. Will it get repetitive? We'll just have to see.
 |
| Combat 'stances' will also feature in the game |
All in all, Dragon Age II is looking like Dragon Age: Origins, only better. Mass Effect 2 was the same, and yet that was more than enough to make it one of the best RPG's, if not the best game of 2010. Let's just hope it will work with Dragon Age II as well. Obviously there's loads more we've yet to be shown, so whilst we're optimistic there's no point in passing judgement just yet. This will definitely be one to keep an eye on though, so stay tuned. Dragon Age II has been slated for a release on March 8th 2011 in the US, and March 11th in Europe on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Oh, and Kate Mulgrew is back.
Most Anticipated Feature: Considering The Usual Suspects is one of my favourite films, I'm really looking forward to seeing how their framed narrative pans out. I reckon the mother is Keyser Soze.
