Whatever they do, all new RPGs need to have a mouthful of a subtitle with lots of plural nouns.
Even though I am still playing the first, I am very excited at this announcement-this world has so much potential.
Dragon Age 2: The Ageing
Will your new hero not be a continuation from the possibilities from that storyline? I had presumed that this was at least a possible origin, perhaps up to the player to decide.
Dragon Age: The College Years
Dragon Age: The New Batch
Dragon Age: Age Harder
Dragon Age: Further Awkward Booty-Calls
I will be sad if they have Morrigan’s plot be part of this game, because I am certain that they wouldn’t choose what my Warden chose regarding her.
I also hope they paid close attention to the complaints about pacing because if I have to do something as tedious as Dwarflandia again, I will scream.
“Think like a general and fight like a Spartan…”
I can see the room where the PR crew was brainstorming taglines for the new features that don’t exist yet.
Some girl flashed about how hot the guys were in 300 and decided that was violent enough to be feature! Dragon Age is about being a Spartan! Yes?! Okay?
That is genius!
And the dwarven city is awesome if you’re playing a dwarf. I could imagine it’s not as great for… well… anyone else.
Dragon Age 2 will be released in March 2011 on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, EA has confirmed.
In a press release the publishing behemoth said that the game is in development at BioWare’s Edmonton-based studio.
According to the blurb: “With Dragon Age 2, the world’s pre-eminent RPG developer is revolutionizing the genre again, infusing the universe with more action, a new, more responsive combat system and a dynamic story that is already among the most multifaceted in gaming.”
The hero mentioned earlier today by US mag Game Informer is Hawke, a survivor of the Blight who will transform the face of the Dragon Age universe forever. He’s described as a penniless refugee who rises to power to become the single most important character in the world of Dragon Age. Known to be a survivor of the Blight and the Champion of Kirkwall, the legend around Hawke’s rise to power is shrouded in myth and rumour.
He? No love for the womyn?
I imagine it’ll be like DA where your last name is predetermined for the voice acting. If they were going to seriously shed the opportunity to play a female character, I would have words. Lots of them. But until they actually say that, I won’t assume it.
This is dangerous. When Bioware hears a complaint, they go scorched earth on it. We could end up with a bunch of shallow 20 minute missions. “More action, a new, more responsive combat system” means they might be going all ME2 on Dragon Age.
That doesn’t mean I’ll hate it, but there are lots of games like that. There is only one AAA party based tactical combat CRPG right now.
Yeah, ME2 is the main thing that makes me nervous about this game. Up until then, Bioware sequels were always a zillion times better than the original, but ME2 totally blew it.
The move toward action-oriented semi-RPGs combined with the short development timeline makes me doubly nervous that way. I just don’t see how they can hope to have the kind of depth that DAO had when they have to make it so quickly.
But I hope to be wrong, really really hard.
I also hope they get a better team to work on the console versions, because seriously.
No, no, no GOD NO! Everyone stop SAYING THAT! It can’t be true! It just can’t! SOB
I have to say, that was my fear when reading that too. Have to wait and see I guess.
What makes you think it’s so short? Like I said, DA was effectively done by the second half of 2008. All they really did in 2009 was polish and work on the console ports, but they didn’t need the entire team for that. By the time March 2011 comes out, DA2 will have had around 2.5 years of serious dev. They probably had a smaller team start even earlier with story and design.
That sounds like a good theory, but in my opinion Awakenings was seriously rushed out the door - that should have had another few months to really get polished and working well (not to mention balanced) and while Origins was amazing up and down all catagories (for me, any way) Awakenings fell just a little short in almost every way (though it was just an expansion - but an expensive, stand alone one at that). I’m worried DA2 will be more like Awakenings than Origins.
And don’t even get me started on what they might be changing to the combat. Can’t they just keep ME2 being their big action RPG and leave the Dragon Age franchise combat alone? Unless the changes DO make it better, of course. Who can say?
I’m less worried about this series going as actiony as Mass Effect 2 than some folks here, mostly because Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age operate on fundamentally different principles. Mass Effect is a shooter universe, and shooting is a skill that you can accurately translate for the player through a controller much more effectively than melee combat with a big metal stick that may or may not be sharp. In terms of most accurately representing what I want to feel like when I’m playing in the kind of universe where these two different franchises are set, a higher level of abstraction (role playing elements, in other words) makes the most sense for Dragon Age while more direct control over combat makes more sense for Mass Effect. I don’t see how you could make the Dragon Age combat system any more immediate than it already is by making it more action driven than it already is. I finished the game on both PC and 360 and the one where I felt like I was most in tune with the game was the PC, where combat was as close to turn-based as I could make it. On the other hand, comparing Mass Effect and its sequel, there’s just no comparison - I felt much more powerful and in-control in the second, which was a lot like a giant box filled with closed shooters. I had some issues with the layout of the shooter levels that they gave me (mostly the fact that they were all networks of cat tunnel filled with only things clearly and immediately related to my current objective and the occasional stop and plan behind cover segment), but those had less to do with the control and more to do with the fact that I think this was probably BioWare’s first attempt at making a shooter.
To be less generous, Awakenings is janky as hell. I went directly from the main game of Dragon Age on the 360 into the expansion and I could almost literally see the seams in all of the expansion content. There’s a lot of stuff in there that would be super awesome, but it all feels a bit like they just dumped their toybox out at my feet and didn’t even bother sanding down the rough edges on the wooden blocks. I have yet to go back and finish Awakenings because of that.