2721

Where did you find this dirt? Link?

2722

I’m assuming it’s from Brent Knowles blog (http://blog.brentknowles.com/2010/08/15/bioware-brent-year-10-fall-2008-summer-2009/), but I can’t find the entry exactly. I might have just missed it though from scanning.

2723

It was in a youtube video posted a few pages back.

2724

Is there any way to play this on the PC with the XBox 360 controller? I fired it up but it doesn’t seem to be working.

2725

The link you posted is the exact entry.

2726

Yeah, I found that link on another forum right as I was leaving work so I didn’t get a chance to do more than a cursory glance, but I did notice that it was the lead designer’s blog.

Anyway, I went back to replay the mission with Isabella to avoid breaking it this time and it worked out. I’m skipping dialog left and right and playing on Normal to speed things up until I finally get back to where I was before all this nonsense. I’m noticing on Normal as a rogue that you don’t get to use many of your special abilities (at least in the Dual Wield tree). Even without focus firing with everyone, enemies just drop like flies before I can fire off an Explosive Damage or Twin Vipers. It seems like a really strange dichotomy that doesn’t occur on Hard.

2727

I’m a few hours into it now, but I’m still picking up companions, so I’m probably only a fraction of the way into the main quest. Overall, I’m liking it so far.

I’m very glad that the crafting system only requires me to find a source for each ingredient, rather than manually collecting all the ingredients for each individual potion.

The “simplified” loot system is oddly inconsistent. I can’t customize my companion’s armor, but I can choose the rest of their items, so inventory micromanagement is still there, but I’m blocked from controlling the most interesting element of it. Enemies drop loot, but almost all of it is useless, and it sells for pennies. The net result is an inventory system that retains the boring administrative fiddling common to RPGs, but lacks the expected payoff in terms of gear customization.

Something about the companion system seems more game-able than in previous Bioware titles. I vaguely recall that in Bioware games from olden tymes (KOTOR?) your companions reacted to your Lightside/Darkside status, and sometimes commented if your moral decisions were trending with (or against) their preferences. DA2 doesn’t seem to have an objective moral scale for grading your actions, so companions only care if you make a decision relevant to their favorite issue(s), and they are present to witness it. The companions in ME2 were also indifferent to anything that happened outside their view, but you couldn’t manipulate that system because they were honest about requiring you to do a huge favor in return for their loyalty. Suspension of disbelief is harder when I can see the Companion Influence Spreadsheet floating above their heads.

2728

So here’s a couple of screens of my character. The first one is earlier in the game, where I decided to make a bald female character and see how well it could work. I was pretty happy with the result.

Later I made some refinements to her face (mostly making it a little longer, increasing the size of her ears, and removing a bit of the jowly look she has). I found she looks pretty good with a few of the hair cuts as well, so I’ve been mixing it up like below.

2729

It’s not a disaster zone, but it is terribly disappointing; a fair summary is to say that it is made up of good parts, but the whole is far less than the sum of its parts.

*The story has good elements but is not integrated. There is no story arc and presentation is clumsy.
*The combat is supposed to provide immediate feedback and a fast-paced experience, which is undermined by all interesting abilities having cooldowns lasting twice as long as most fights.
*The dialogue is painfully obviously trying to be witty and sophisticated, but misses. Better to be comptent but cliched.

  • Re-use of dungeons is glaring. I already cleared this place. WTF am I here again? Or, WTF is the templar cave in lower bogoff identical to the spider lair of mount sod uu?

I really feel conflicted about this. On the one hand, it’s an ok-ish RPG that tries hard to be good. On the other hand it’s the sequel to DA:O and one expects better from Bioware.

EDIT: Basically this. http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/dragon-age-ii.php. This is accurate.

2730

The combo points for Explosive Strike carry over between enemies. Typically if I’m not going to get good value out of it I’ll just “save it” for a full HP enemy. I do find my Rogue’s active abilities are limited by a small STA pool, but that was my decision in not investing in Will.

It’s a bit early in the game for me to be talking builds - and I’m reluctant to spoil anything by researching - but it seems to me that if you’re building a character around Unforgiving Chain/Explosive Strike, you don’t want to be using a lot of activated abilities, since they reset UC. My approach has been to skimp on Stamina, take UC/ES, and to use the Speed stance, and build up the flanking/crit abilities in the Shadow tree. That way the focus is on normal melee damage and flanking, rather than on special attacks that would conflict with UC/ES bonuses.

A2 doesn’t seem to have an objective moral scale for grading your actions, so companions only care if you make a decision relevant to their favorite issue(s), and they are present to witness it. The companions in ME2 were also indifferent to anything that happened outside their view, but you couldn’t manipulate that system because they were honest about requiring you to do a huge favor in return for their loyalty. Suspension of disbelief is harder when I can see the Companion Influence Spreadsheet floating above their heads.

Yeah but DA:O was considerably easier to game. Not only was it purely based on characters being present in the party, you could do party member substitution on the fly from a menu, so you could swap out Alistair, Wynne and Leliana for Sten, Morrigan and Zevren and vice versa. On top of that they had gifts; it was pretty easy to be old fishing buddies with every single party member (including a certain surprise party member at the end of the game) in spite of their differing alignments and/or murderous hatred for one another.

2731

A little technical tip for those running on Nvidia cards. I’m only two hours in, but I’ve had a couple of driver crashes (followed by app crash) when transitioning out of menus (shops, inventory, journal etc). Symptoms are that the transition seems to be ever so slightly slow, followed by the display driver falling over, which then subsequently kills the app. You may notice slowness exiting menu screens without the crash too.

I had the exact same symptoms with Fallout New Vegas, in exactly the same circumstances - transitioning out of pipboy or menu screens, followed by a driver crash, so when I saw it in DA2 I knew what was up.

To solve it, go to the Nvidia control panel (right-click on desktop and select it) and add a profile for the DragonAge2.exe. Set the “Power Management Mode” value to “Prefer maximum performance”, save and restart the game. For me, the slow transistions have gone, and so have the crashes.

2732

So the fact that it’s getting a ‘meh’ reception had me holding off, but this seals it…

2733

Addressed back here by one of our own, even. It’s disappointing that they were in such a rush to get their news out first that they’re not even bothering to ask the companies involved.

2734

I’ll look into that Jason. I’m curious if Shadow and Assassin trees are good ones to overlap, guess I’ll read up on the choices a bit more and test out how well they work in conjunction with one another. Back to DA2.

2735

What is it with Bioware and level design?
They spend so much work and resources on music&sound, voice work, graphics and localization but when it comes to designing the explorable world they always end up with two warehouses and a cave template?

2736

It’s an artifact of an art-obsessed level design lead. Someone insisted on perfect lighting and beautiful decoration and placement, and didn’t care that due to lack of resources the player will have to go through the same damn dungeon a dozen times.

“Oh, we can fix that, we’ll just block off different parts every time and it will feel completely different.”

Yeah, right.

2737

The reused levels are clearly a time of development issue in this case. Artists are expensive and take a lot of time, so that’s where the shorter development schedule shows in DA2.

That said, I do think the environments are actually better on the whole. The Deep Roads have been a lot more interesting to me then it was in the first game.

2738

Would you mind providing a little more detail on the specifics of how to do this? I’m not seeing an option to adjust power management mode.

2739

Once in the nVidia control panel -

3D settings -> Manage 3D Settings -> Program Settings
Wait for the list to populate, pick the game, and on the panel below you’ll see one of the adjustable entries is “Power Management Mode”.

2740

I’m mostly liking my performance with stock-voltage E8400@3ghz and HD5770, 1680x1050 High settings, but I’m periodically getting the 2-3 second pause thing in dialogue, which is a little disconcerting.

I’ve had temperature monitors running and nothing seems to be running very hot. The only thing I’d really not care about toggling off would be SSAO, but I haven’t seen a setting for it.